LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 




A SERIES OF LECTURES DELIVERED IN 
PRINCES HALL, PICCADILLY. 



Bostox, Mass.: 
McDOXALD, GILL & CO., 
Office of the Christian Witness, 
36 Bkomfield St. 
18S8. 





BY 



MRS. BOOTH. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand 
eight hundred and eighty-seven, by 

BALLINGTOK BOOTH, 

In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



CONTENTS. 



LECTUEE I. 

Popular Christianity: Its False Christs Compared 
with the Christ of God . . . 



LECTURE II. 
Popular Christianity: Its Mock Salvation v. a 
Real Deliverance from Sin , 



LECTURE III. 
Popular Christianity: Its Sham Compassions, the 
Dying Love of Christ 



LECTURE IV. 
Popular Christianity: Its Cowardly Service v. the 
Real Warfare 



LECTURE V. 
Popular Christianity: Its Sham Judgment in Con- 
trast with the Great White Throne 



Notes of Three Addresses on Household Gods 



The Salvation Army Following Christ 
3 



INTRODUCTION. 



There are thousands in this as well as other lands who, 
through the reading of my dear mother's books, have received 
fresh light, blessing and inspiration, and have turned from her 
burning words to unsheath the sword which they had allowed 
to grow rusty in the scabbard, and go forth unflinchingly to 
battle against empty formalism and God- dishonoring profes- 
sion. Through her instrumentality the whole tenor of many 
lives has been changed. Those who through faint-heariedness 
and custom had long hidden their light beneath some bushel 
of conformity to the world have been unmistakably shown 
their cowardice and danger, been driven to their knees, and 
have risen to shine as a hill-top beacon upon the world which 
once failed to see in them the Christ of God. Many who had lived 
to seek self-ease, earthly gain and the world's approval have 
caught from her pages the Spirit of Him whose infinite com- 
passion led Him out to ever yearn over and toil for the good 
of others, regardless of bitter consequences to Himself. 

Oli, Christ-like, patient mission, 
Stooping low to man's condition; 
Others catch Thy flame of love 
Ever kindled from above, 
Till the darkness fieeth, 
And the "blind one seeth, 
And the hound one leapeth — 
Happy evermore. 

5 



*6 



ixTBonrcuox. 



Since my dear mother cannot visit this country, at least in 
her present bodily weakness. I can hut rejoice in feeling that 
rhis new book, which embodies some of her soul's convictions, 
can be cast upon the sea of American literature. O God, 
grant it may counteract the influence of the many books that 
have been penned and published to shake and weaken the 
foundations of Christ's Christianity. Those who are sincerely 
toiling to bring God's kingdom back to a world that has 
slighted and disowned His Christ can but mourn over the ten- 
dency of the present age to rob God's truths of their vitality 
and pungency. TVe feel that to them this book will be speci- 
ally welcome as a fearless and God-inspired warning to the 
nineteenth century. 

I. who saw my dear mother at the time she was arranging 
the manuscript for this volume, and realized the physical 
weakness which had at that time laid her aside from public 



labor, pray, as I know she did, over almost every hue, that her 
words may be read aright, and that her true meaning may be 
accepted and find its way into many a conscience. 

I commit the book to God and present it to the American 
people, praying that my mother's words upon The 4 * Christ 
of God." " A Eeal Deliverance from Sin,*' " The Dying Love 



of Jesus," may inspire to " Eeal TTarf are," the dethroning of 
"Household Gods,'' and such following of Christ as shall lead 
each reader without fear to face " The Great White Throne." 

B AL L EN~ Gr T 0 N BOOTH. 

Headquarters oe The Salvation Army, 
73 BEEKiLAN- St., New York City. 



PREFACE. 



IN committing these addresses to the press, I would like to 
say to my readers that although for months after their delivery 
I was continually pressed to publish them by many of my 
hearers. I steadily refused, chiefly because I feared that in 
cold type they might produce an impression of censoriousness, 
which was not possible when, as I believe, assisted by the 
Spirit of God, I dealt with my hearers face to face on these 
burning topics. 

During my late illness I became deeply convinced that it was 
my duty to let these utterances, such as they are, go forth 
irrespective of consequences, in the hope of reaching a greater 
number of persons similarly circumstanced with those to whom 
they were originally spoken, many of whom professed to have 
received great personal blessing, with increased light and 
power for usefulness. 

Having come to this conclusion, 1 submitted the MSS. to my 
friend Commissioner Railton, who not only strongly urged me 
to publish them, but favored me with some most valuable 
suggestions and emendations. 

May He whose kingdom and glory alone I seek bless every 
reader with grace to receive whatever truth he may find in 
these pages applicable to himself in the love of it. 

CATHERINE BOOTH. 

London, July : 1887. 
7 



LECTURE I. 



Popular Christianity : Its False Christs 
Compared with the Christ of God. 



the christs of the nineteenth century. 

I suppose tliere will be no division of opinion in 
my audience as to the fact that humanity needs a 
Christ, — that everywhere and in all ages, men and 
women have been, and are still conscious of a strife 
with evil ; not merely physical evil represented by 
thorns and thistles, but with moral evil — evil in 
thought, in intention, in action, both in themselves 
and in those around them. This consciousness of 
wrong has thrust upon men the realization of their 
need of help from some extraneous power, or being. 
In all generations men have seemed to feel that 
without such help there must be a perishing. 

This sense of need has been forced upon men, 
first, by the failure of their own repeated efforts to 
help and save themselves. 

Secondly, by their observation of such fruitless 
efforts in others. 

What man or woman who has thought at all, who 
9 



10 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY . 



has not stood on the edge of this human whirlpool, 
and watched the struggling multitudes as they have 
risen and sunk, striving and struggling by resolu- 
tions, by the embracing of new theories, by taking 
of pledges, and making new departures, to escape 
from the evil of their own natures and to save them- 
selves? Who has watched the struggle without 
realizing the need that some Almighty independent 
arm should be stretched out to deliver and to save ? 
Who can read history or contemplate the experience 
of humanity at the present time, without realizing 
that it needs a Saviour, whatever idea may be enter- 
tained as to the kind of Saviour required? 

Further, this sense of need is the outcome of the 
filial instinct born in every human soul, which cries 
out in the hour of distress or danger to an Almighty 
Father, — a God, — a friend somewhere in the uni- 
verse, able to help and to deliver. This instinct is 
at the bottom of all religions, and more or less em- 
bodied in all their formulas, from that of the un- 
tutored savage up to the profoundest philosopher 
the world has ever produced. Perhaps the cry of 
humanity, destitute of a Divine revelation, could 
not be better summed up than in the following 
words of Plato, who, speaking of the soul and its 
destiny, says : — 

" It appears to me that to know them clearly in 
the present life is either impossible or very difficult ; 
on the other hand, not to test what has been said of 
them in every possible way, not to investigate the 
whole matter and exhaust upon it every effort, is 



ITS FALSE CHRIS TS. 



11 



the part of a very weak man. For we ought in re- 
spect to these things, either to learn from others 
how they stand, or to discover them for ourselves, 
or, if both these are impossible, then taking the best 
of human reasonings, that which appears the best 
supported, and embarking on that, as one who risks 
himself on a raft — so to sail through life — unless 
one could be carried more safely, or with less risk, 
on a secret conveyance, or some Divine Logos." 

In this confession, and in that of many others 
similar, we see, as it were, a mighty soul prying 
through the gates of life, striving to fathom the 
mysteries of being and to unlock the unknown 
future, — in fact, crying out for a Christ, a Divine 
Word, or Logos, a something or somebody who 
should guide him, taking him up where human 
reason and philosophy failed him. It is also worthy 
of note that it has always been the highest t}'pe of 
man in all ages who has cried out most persistently 
for an extraneous deliverer. The more conscious 
of his own powers and the higher in his aspirations 
man has become, the more vehemently has he sought, 
outside of himself, for light and deliverance. Surely 
this universal cry of humanity, in all its phases and 
throughout all ages, betrays a great want, casting 
its shadows before — the cry of the creature re- 
sponding to the purpose of the Creator to send a 
Saviour able to save to the uttermost of man's 
necessity. The great realized want of humanity 
was a deliverer who could take away its sense of 
guilt, enlighten its ignorance, and energize it for 



12 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



the practice of all goodness and truth, — a being 
who could not only stand without and legislate as 
to what men were to do, but who could come within 
and empower them to do it. Heathen philosophies 
and ancient religions could say, " Love thy neigh- 
bor," but they could none of them inspire the man 
to do it, much less enable him to love his enemy — 
none of them even aspired to command that. That 
was beyond humanity. Here, then, was the great 
need of a power to come inside and rectify the 
wrong, making the spring right, so that its outcome 
might be right. 

Further, I want to remark that in the Bible a 
Christ is offered that meets this need. This is the 
great distinguishing boast of our faith — the only 
religion on the face of the earth in which the idea 
of a Christ has ever been conceived. The Bible 
offers this Christ. The golden chimes of great joy 
that rang out on the day when He was heralded by 
the angels, were to be glad tidings to all people of a 
Saviour which was Christ the Lord, a mighty de- 
liverer, able to cope with man's inability, with the 
disadvantages of his circumstances, and the conse- 
quences of his fall. Now we contend that this 
Christ of the Bible, the Christ who appeared in. 
Judea 1800 years ago is now abroad in the earth 
just as much as He was then, and that He presents 
to humanity all that it needs ; that He is indeed, as 
He represented Himself to be, the Bread of Life 
come down from heaven, the Light, and the Life, 
and the Strength of man, meeting this cry of his 



ITS FALSE CHRISTS. 



13 



soul which has been going up to God for genera- 
tions. Here I stand and make my boast, that the 
Christ of God, my Christ, the Christ of the Salva- 
tion Army, does meet this crying need of the soul, 
does fill this aching void, and does become to man 
that which God sets Him forth as being in this 
book. Guilty humanity He promises to pardon, 
and He does pardon. Ignorant humanity (with re- 
spect to God and the things of God) He promises 
to enlighten, and He does enlighten it. Degraded, 
sunken, impure humanity (in the very essence of 
its being) He promises to purify, and He does purify 
it. We make our boast of this Christ, and we say 
He is able to save to the uttermost, and that He 
does this now as much as ever He has done in the 
1800 years that are past, — that He is a real, living, 
present Saviour to those who really receive and put 
their trust in Him. 

I know that many may answer, This is not the 
Christ that is generally presented in the preaching 
and teaching of this age, or that is generally pro- 
fessed and believed in by the Christians of this age ; 
neither do we see such results as you depict in their 
characters or lives.'' Granted. The sceptics and 
the infidels say : " We do not see these results, and 
therefore we do not believe in your Christ." And 
I say, looking at the question from their standpoint, 
I should feel just as they do, because they have a 
right to have these results proved to them. It is 
useless telling of wonderful things having transpired 
a long time ago and a long distance away. They 



14 POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 

say, Show them now ; show us the men in whom 
this change is wrought, and then we will believe 
that this Christ always does these things. I say 
Amen, and that because they do not see these signs 
in the popular Christianity of this day, therefore 
they reject its Christ, and there is great excuse for 
them, — not such excuse as will justify them at the 
bar of God, because they ought to have found out 
Christ for themselves, — nevertheless, an excuse to 
themselves and to their fellow-men. 

I say, I grant that this is not the Christ exhibited 
in these days. 

I will now try to give to you, as I perceive them, 
those modern representations of Christ which, 
instead of drawing all men unto Him, have driven 
the great mass away from Him, and disgusted many 
of the ablest minds with the whole system of exist- 
ing Christianity. 

FALSE CHEISTS. 

The first imaginary Christ of this age seems to be 
a sort of religious myth or good angel — a being of 
the imagination who lived in the long distance, and 
who does very well to preach, write, and sing about, 
or to make pictures about, with which to adorn 
people's dwellings — a kind of religious Julius 
Caesar, who did wonderful things ages ago, and who 
is somehow or other going to benefit in the future 
those w T ho intellectually believe in Him now ; but 
as to helping man in his present need, guilt, bond- 
age, or agony, they never even pretend that He 



ITS FALSE C HEISTS. 



15 



does anything of tlie kind. This Christ makes no 
difference in them or their lives ; they live precisely 
as their neighbors do, only that they profess to be- 
lieve in this Christ while their neighbors do not. 

Now this is not the Christ represented in the New 
Testament. The Christ of God was a real veritable 
person, who walked about, and taught, and com- 
municated with men ; who helped and saved them 
from their evil appetites and passions, and who 
promised to keep on doing so to the end of the 
world ; who called His followers to come out from 
the evil and sin of the world to follow Him, carry- 
ing His cross, obeying His words, and consecrating 
themselves to the same purposes for which He lived 
and died ; seeking always to overcome evil with 
good, and to breast the swelling tide of human pas- 
sion and opposition with meekness, patience, and 
love ; promising to be in them an Almighty Divine 
presence, renovating and renewing the whole man, 
and empowering them to walk in His footsteps. 

I am afraid there are thousands who sit in our 
churches and chapels and hear the modern Christ 
descanted on, who, if asked their idea of Christ, 
would be utterly at a loss to give it. They have no 
definite conception of what His name or being 
means. They would not like to say whether He is 
in heaven or on earth. If asked whether He had 
done anything for them personally, they cannot tell ; 
the most they say is that they hope so, or that thej~ 
hope He will do something some day. He is to 
them a mere idea. 



16 



POPULAR CHPISTIAXITT. 



Another false but very common view of Christ in 
these clays is that He is a sort of Divine make-weight. 
You will hear people say, when spoken to about 
their souls. 4 - Yes. I know I am very weak and sin- 
ful, but I am doing the best I can, and Jesus is my 
Saviour ; He will make up what I lack.'* In these 
instances there is not even the recognition of the 
necessity of pardon, much less of the power of 
Christ to renew the soul in righteousness, and to fit 
it for the holy employments and companionships of 
heaven. This Christ is simply dragged at the tail, 
not only of human effort but of human failure, and 
offered, as it were, in the arms of an impudent pre- 
sumption, as a make-up in the scale of human 
deserts. And yet how many thousands of church 
and chapel-going people, it is to be feared, are 
deluded by supposing that this imaginary Christ will 
meet the needs of their souls before the judgment 
bar of God. 

To others this imaginary Christ is only a superior 
human being, a beautiful example — the most beau- 
tiful the world has ever seen : not Divine, yet the 
nearest to our conception of the Divine which even 
they think possible, but only human still. This 
Christ is held up as the embodiment of all that is 
noble, true, self-sacrificing and holy — an example 
of what we are to be, but supplying no power by 
which to conform ourselves to the model. 

I frequently find that the people who make so 
much ado about the example of Christ are the 
furthest from following it. They say it is not in- 



ITS FALSE CHRIS TS. 



17 



tended to be followed literally. But how else can 
you imitate anyone ? How can an example be fol- 
lowed figuratively ? Alas ! the admirers of this 
human Christ make it sadly manifest in their lives 
and experience that humanity needs not only a 
model, but an inspiring presence to restore its lost 
balance, energize its feeble faculties, and rekindle 
its spiritual aspirations. Conceiving only of a hu- 
man model, the paralysed soul finds no higher source 
of strength than its own desires and resolutions, 
and after the oft-repeated experiment at self-deliver- 
ance, sinks at length overwhelmed with a sense of 
failure and despair. It is not in man or angel, how- 
ever sublime, to free the human soul from its fetters 
of realized guilt, or to empower it for the reconquest 
of that Eden of righteousness and peace from which 
the avenging angel of justice once expelled it. A 
human Christ is only a phantom of the imagination, 
an ignis fatuus. 

Another modern representation of the Christ is 
that of a substitutionary Saviour, — not in the sense 
of atonement merely, but in the way of obedience. 
This Christ is held up as embodying in Himself the 
sum and substance of the sinner's salvation, needing 
only to be believed in, that is, accepted by the mind 
as the atoning Sacrifice, and trusted in as securing 
for the sinner all the benefits involved in His death, 
without respect to any inwrought change in the 
sinner himself. 

This Christ is held up as a justification and pro- 
tection in sin, not as a deliverer from sin. Men and 



18 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



women are assured that no harm can overtake them 
if they believe in this Christ, whatever may be the 
state of their hearts, or however they maj^, in their 
actions, outrage the laws of righteousness and 
truth. 

In other words, men are taught that Christ 
obeyed the law for them, not only as necessary to 
the efficacy of His atonement for their justification, 
but that He has placed His obedience in the stead 
of, or as a substitution for, the sinner's own obedi- 
ence or sanctification, which in effect is like saying, 
Though you may be untrue, Christ is your truth; 
though you may be unclean, Christ is your chastity ; 
though you may be dishonest, Christ is your hon- 
esty ; though you may be insincere, Christ is your 
sincerity. 

The outcome of such a faith only produces out- 
wardly the whited sepulchres of profession, while 
within are rottenness and dead men's bones. The 
Christ of God never undertook to perform any such 
offices for His people, but He did undertake to make 
them "new creatures" and thus to enable them to 
perform them for themselves. He never undertook 
to be true instead of me, but to make me true to 
the very core of my soul. He never undertook to 
make me pass for pure, either to God or man, but to 
enable me to be pure. He never undertook to make 
me pass for honest or sincere, but to renew me in the 
spirit of my mind so that I could not help but be both, 
as the result of the operation of His Spirit within me. 
He never undertook to love God instead of my do- 



ITS FALSE CHRISTS. 



19 



ing so with " all my heart and mind and soul and 
strength," but He came on purpose to empower and 
inspire me to do this. The idea of a substitutionary 
Christ accepted as an outward covering or refuge, 
instead of the power of " an endless life," is a cheat 
of the devil, and has been the ruin of thousands of 
souls. I fear this view of Christ, so persistently 
preached in the present day, encourages thousands 
in a false hope while they are living in sin, and con- 
sequently under the curse not only of a broken law, 
but of a Saviour denied and abjured. Let me ask 
you, my hearers, what sort of a Christ is yours ? 
Have you a Christ who saves yon, who renews your 
heart, who enables you to live in obedience to God, 
or are you looking to this outside and imaginary 
Christ to do your obeying for you ? 

Another false idea of Christ, entertained, I fear, 
by multitudes of sincere souls, is that of a Divine 
condemnation. 

This class of people seem to think that they ought 
to spend all their lives bewailing and bemoaning 
their sins, and are forever crying out, " Oh, wretched 
man that I am," " Christ have mercy on us, misera- 
ble sinners " ; and they go on crying this every day 
of their lives. They forget that He of whom 
Moses and the prophets did write, is come. They 
forget that the deliverer is here — that pardon is 
offered, and that He is ready to witness it and fill 
their souls with peace and joy. If Christ be only 
for condemnation, what are these poor souls advan- 
taged by His coming ? what has He done more than 



20 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



the law did, for them ? The law made them realize 
their bondage, writhe under a sense of their sins, 
and set them longing after freedom and deliverance. 
It was their schoolmaster (or should have been) to 
bring them to Christ — Christ, the Son, who was to 
make them free ; but alas ! in this case He is made 
a much harder schoolmaster than the law itself, for 
these poor souls get no deliverance, no peace, no 
joy, or power. They are always piping Paul's be- 
wailing notes, in which he personified a convicted 
sinner, struggling under the fetters of condemna- 
tion. But they never get into his triumphant notes, 
where he declares, "there is now no condemnation." 

This false view of Christ has led to most of the 
idolatries, penances, and lacerations of Catholicism. 

The exhibition of a Christ too unsympathetic and 
implacable to be approached without a second in- 
tercessor — a far-off, austere judge, rather than a 
pitying, pardoning Saviour, — has kept millions of 
poor souls in bondage all their lives. I must say. 
however, that I have more sympathy with such 
souls, because they are sincere, and earnest, and 
willing to deny themselves, in order to find the right 
way, than with those who thoughtlessly take refuge 
under any of the false representations of Christ to 
which we have referred. It is to be feared, how- 
ever, that the same spirit of worldliness which has 
so largely destroyed the power of Protestantism, 
has, to a great extent, extinguished this groping 
after Christ in the Catholic Church. I confess that 
I cannot see sufficient cause for congratulations 



ITS FALSE CHRIS TS. 



21 



such as are common in Protestant circles over the 
decadence of Popery, seeing that everybody knows 
that it is not in consequence of a growth of real 
heavenly light, but only the further spread of a 
careless, godless, take-it-easy spirit, putting out the 
earnest desire for purification which formerly led to 
so much self-sacrifice in the Church of Rome.' 
There can be no doubt that it is through the loss of 
this true spirit of devotion that the evils which 
have crept into that Church have so completely 
overshadowed the good, and prevented the multi- 
plication of St. Bernards and others who got through 
the self-despair into the purest light and joy. Still, 
there are many earnest souls left, who continue to 
cry over their sins as though no deliverer had come. 
The Christ of God came not to bring condemnation 
but pardon, peace, and gladness to every penitent 
sinner on the face of the earth. I heard, the other 
day, a story which beautifully illustrates this: A 
poor Catholic woman, who had been in bondage all 
her life to a sense of guilt, and had earnestly sought 
by all the methods prescribed by her Church, espe- 
cially by devotion to the Virgin Mary, to find peace 
and deliverance, when on her death-bed was brought 
into contact with one who had in reality found the 
Christ of God, and who was enabled to show to this 
poor trembling soul the sufficiency of His sacrifice, 
and His willingness to pardon and to purify. 
Through the influence of the Spirit of God which 
accompanied this exhibition of the true Christ, she 
was enabled to rest her soul on Him, and immedi- 



22 



POPULAR CHRISTIAXITY. 



ately entered into rest. Shortly afterwards her 
priest presented himself at her bedside, when she 
accosted him with the words, "Oh, you are too late, 
too late, I have found a better Priest than you, and 
He has absolved me. I am happy, happy, happy ! " 

The Christ of God is not a condemnatory Christ, 
but a pitying, pardoning Saviour, calling to His 
bosom the weary and heavy laden in all ages. 

Another of these false views of Christ is that 
which presents Him as a future deliverer^ without 
being a present Saviour. 

It is to be feared that thousands are looking to 
Him to save them from the consequences of sin — 
that is, hell, — who continue to commit sin ; they 
utterly misunderstand the aim and work of the 
Christ of God. They do not see that He came not 
merely to bring men to heaven, but to bring them 

JO 7 O 

back into harmony with His Father ; they look upon 
the atonement as a sort of make-shift plan by which 
they are to enter heaven, leaving their characters 
unchanged on earth. They forget that sin is a far 
greater evil in the Divine estimation than hell ;. they 
do not see that sin is the primal evil. If there were 
no sin there need be no hell. God only proposes to 
save people from the consequences of sin by saving 
them from the sin itself ; and this is the great dis- 
tinguishing work of Christ — to save His people f rom 
their sins ! 

THE CHRIST OF GOD. 

Now I deny that any of the representations of 
Christ to which I have referred are the Bible repre- 



ITS FALSE CHRISTS 



23 



sentations of the Christ of God. or that they meet 
the need of the soul of man. They are for the most 
part made to meet the ideas of a modern worldly 
Christianity. 

Men have made up their minds that they can 
possess and enjoy all they can get of this world in 
common with their fellow-men, and yet get to heaven 
at last. They have made up their minds that it is 
all nonsense about following the Christ. — becoming 
a laughing-stock to the world, which He made Him- 
self every day He lived, — and setting themselves to 
live a holy life, which He said if they did not they 
were none cf His: all this they have abandoned as 
an impossibility, and yet, nut content without a 
religion, and finding it impossible to look into the 
future without a hope of some sort, they have manu- 
factured a Christ to meet their views, and spun 
endless theories to match the state of their hearts. 
The worst of alb however, is that a great many of 
the teachers of Christianity have adopted these 
theories, and spend their whole lives in misrepre- 
senting the Christ of the Gospel. 

Now let me try to put before you what I conceive 
to be the true representation of the Christ of GocL 
We say that He meets the whole world's need — 
that He comes to it walking on the waves of its 
difficulties, sins, and sorrows, and says, " I am the 
Bread of Life ; take Me. appropriate Me. live by Me, 
and you will live forever. I will resuscitate and 
pardon, cleanse and energize you; I am the Christ, 
the Saviour of the World." This is the Divine 



24 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



"Word," or deliverer, which philosophers have 
longed for, and stretched out their dying hands to 
embrace — which all the heathen world have, more 
or less, groped after in some dim figure. 

First : The Christ of Grod is Divine. 

We admit the incarnation was a mystery, looked 
at from a human standpoint, but no greater mystery 
than many other incarnations taking place all around 
us, and because a mystery, none the less a necessity. 
Humanity must have a deliverer able to save, and 
no less than .an Almighty deliverer was equal to the 
task. Here, all merely human deliverers, all phil- 
osophers and teachers of the world, had failed, be- 
cause they could only teach, they could not renew. 
They could set up a standard, enunciate a doctrine, 
but they could not remove man's inability, or endue 
him with power to reach it. Here even the law of 
God failed, and that which was ordained to life 
wrought death. Here was the sunken rock, the bit- 
ter, maddening failure of all systems and deliverers 
— they failed to rectify the heart ; they could not 
give a new life or impart another spirit. 

We saw at the outset that man needed some being 
outside of himself, above him, and yet able to 
understand and pity him in his utmost guilt, misery, 
and helplessness — able to inspire him with a new 
life, to impart light, love, strength, and endurance, 
and to do this always and everywhere, in every 
hour of darkness, temptation, and danger. Human- 
ity needed an exhibition of God, not merely to be 
told about Him, but to see Him ; not merely to 



ITS FALSE CHRISTS. 



25 



know that He was an Almighty Creator, able to 
crush him, but that He is a pitiful Father, yearning 
and waiting to save him. God's expedient for 
showing this to man was to come in the flesh. Can 
the wisest modern philosopher or the most benevo- 
lent philanthropist conceive a better ? How other- 
wise could God have revealed Himself to fallen 
man ? Since the fall, man has proved himself 
incapable of seeing or knowing God; he has ever 
been afraid of the heavenly, running away even 
from an angel ; and when only hearing a voice and 
seeing the smoke which hid the Divinity, he exceed- 
ingly feared and quaked, and begged not to hear 
that voice again. Truly, no man, as he is by nature, 
can see God and live. Seeing then, that God 
desired that man should see Him — that is, know 
Him — and live, notwithstanding his fall, He prom- 
ised a Saviour, who should reveal Him in all the 
holiness and benevolence of His character, and in 
His plenitude of power to save ! 

Here the Christ of God presents Himself, claim- 
ing to be this Divine Saviour. An objector may 
ask for proof of His Divinity. This would be far 
too great a subject to go into now, but we may 
glance at two or three considerations, which are 
quite sufficient, unless, indeed, Christ were an 
impostor. 

First, those who reject His Divinity say He is the 
nearest to the Divine of anything we can conceive. 
They say He is the best of the good of our race — • 
even infidels cannot find fault with His character ; 



26 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



they all bow down before the spotless purity, the 
beneficence and moral beauty of Jesus Christ. All 
schools grant this. Then, taking my stand here. I 
say that this perfect being claimed to be Divine, and 
He claimed it so unmistakably and persistently, that 
if you take it out of His teachings, you reduce 
them to a jumble of inconsistencies. His Divinity 
is the central fact around which all His doctrines 
and teachings revolve, so that if this be extin- 
guished, they become like a system of astronomy 
without the sun. dark, conflicting, and inconsistent. 
Read the Gospels and eliminate for yourselves all 
His assumptions of Divinity, and then see what you 
can make of His teaching. 

Secondly, these assumptions were understood and 
resented by the people to whom He spoke, and they 
surely were the best judges as to what He meant. 
If they had mistaken His meaning, He was bound, 
merely as a man of honor, to explain Himself, but 
He never did: so when the Jews said, %i W r hom 
makest Thou Thyself." or, ki This man maketh 
himself equal with God." He did not demur or 
retract, but repeated, " I came forth from the 
Father, and I go to the Father." This was the one 
intolerable point in His teaching, which the Jews, 
who owned no plurality in gods, could not endure; 
that anv other beincr should be one wirh their Jeho- 
vah, was to them insufferable, and for this they 
ultimately cruciried Him. M What further need 
have we." said the high priest, " of witnesses ? 
Behold, now ye have heard His blasphemy." 



ITS FALSE CUEISTS. 



27 



Then, if He were so near an approach to perfec- 
tion as even infidels admit, how was it that He 
allowed such an impression of His teachings to go 
abroad, if he were not Divine? How could He say, 
" If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in 
your sins," if He had not known Himself to be the 
Christ of God? 

Thirdly, His character supported His assumptions. 
For 1800 years millions of the best of the human 
race have accepted these assumptions without being 
shocked by them. If He be not Divine, how comes it 
to be that the greatest of human intellects, the sincer- 
est of human souls, and the most aroused and anxious 
of human consciences, have ventured their all upon 
this Divine Word, and have seen nothing contradic- 
tory between His claims and the actual character 
which He sustained in the world ; whereas, imagine 
the very holiest and best who ever trod our earth 
putting forth such assumptions, and how would 
they sound ! Suppose Moses, who had talked with 
God in the burning bush, or Isaiah, whose tongue 
was touched with the live coal from off the altar, or 
Daniel, the man greatly beloved, to whom the angel 
Gabriel was sent again and again, or the apostle of 
the Gentiles, who was admitted into the third heaven, 
or the beloved apostle John, — suppose any of these 
men saying, "I am from above, ye are from be- 
neath,'' "I am not of this world,*' 4 - If ye believe not 
I am He, ye shall die in your sins," 4i I came forth 
from the Father, and am come into the world." 
Again, "I leave the world and go to the Father;" 



28 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



and in His prayer on the eve of His agony, 44 The 
glory which I had with the Father before the world 
was," and again, in answer to Philip's request, 
••Show ns the Father/' — "Have I been so long 
time with yon, and yet hast thou not known Me? he 
that hath seen Me hath seen the Father ; " " believest 
thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in 
Me ? " 

And not only does He claim this oneness of essence 
with the Father, but also that omniscience which en- 
ables Him not only to be with His people but to 
dwell in them, as shown in His answer to the ques- 
tion of Judas, when he asked how it was that He 
would manifest Himself to His own people and not 
to the world. Jesus answered, 44 If a man love Me, 
he will keep My words : and My Father will love 
him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode 
with him.'* 

Think of any creature — a David, a Paul, a John, 

— daring to claim for himself this omniscience. If 
this Christ were not Divine, then there is no alter- 
native : he was altogether an impostor and a de- 
ceiver. 

From such a conclusion, however, even infidels 
and blasphemers shrink, and therefore we must be 
allowed to hold to our faith in our Divine Redeemer 

— our Immanuel, 44 God with us.*' I may ask here, 
if there is one of my .hearers whose consciousness 
does not tell him that he needs a Divine Saviour ? 
Would any less than an Almighty, omniscient, 
infinite deliverer meet the needs of your souls? If 



ITS FALSE CUBISTS. 



29 



so, you must feel much better and stronger, and 
more able to help yourselves than I do. "Great is 
the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the 
flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached 
unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received 
up into glory." 

But take this mystery out of Christianity, and 
the whole system utterly collapses. Without a 
Divine Christ Christianity sinks into a mere system 
of philosophy, and becomes as powerless for the 
renovation and salvation of mankind as any of the 
philosophies which have preceded it. But no, our 
Joshua has come, our Deliverer is here ; He is come, 
and is now literally fulfilling His promise to abide, 
"I and my Father will come unto you, and make 
our abode with you." He comes now in the flesh 
of His true saints, just as really as he came first in 
the body prepared for Him, and He comes for the 
same purpose, to renew and to save. He is knock- 
ing at the doors of your hearts even now, through 
my feeble words, and will come into your hearts if 
vou will let Him. As he came walking over the sea 
of Galilee to the men and women of His own day, 
He comes now to you, walking over the storm raised 
by your appetites, your inordinate desires, passions, 
and sins — a storm only just gathering, waxing 
worse and worse, and which, unless allayed, will 
grow to eternal thunderings, lightnings, and billows ; 
but He is able to allay it, He offers to pronounce 
" Peace, be still," and end this tempest of your soul 
fox ever. Will you let Him? 



30 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



Second : The Christ of God offered Himself as a 
sacrifice for the sin of man. 

The Divine law had been broken ; the interests of 
the universe demanded that its righteousness should 
be maintained, therefore its penalty must be en- 
dured by the trangressor, or, in lieu of this, such 
compensation must be rendered as would satisfy the 
claims of justice, and render it expedient for God to 
pardon the guilty. We will not attempt to go into 
the various theories respecting the atonement ; it is 
enough for us to know that Christ made such a sacri- 
fice as rendered it possible for God to be just, and yet 
to pardon the sinner. His sacrifice is never repre- 
sented in the Bible as having purchased or begotten 
the love of the Father, but only as having opened a 
channel through which that love could flow out to 
His rebellious and prodigal children. The doctrine 
of the New Testament on this point is not that " God 
so hated the world that His own Son was compelled 
to die in order to appease His vengeance/' as we fear 
has been too often represented, but that " God so 
loved the world, that He gave His only begotten 
Son." 

As Christ represented His union with the Father 
as perfect and entire on every point and in every 
particular of His humiliation, so He represents it as 
equally complete with respect to the sufficiency and 
vicarious character of His death. " Therefore 
doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My 
life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it 
from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power 



ITS FALSE CHRIS TS. 



31 



to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." 
He so shows that in baring His own heart to the 
sword of justice, He was equally with the Father 
interested in the maintenance of the dignity of the 
law, and equally inspired with boundless and quench- 
less love for its transgressors. 

There has been a great deal of empty talk as to 
the needlessness of a vicarious sacrifice, and many 
contend that the Father's love flows out to all His 
creatures independently of any such intervention ; 
but, setting aside the requirements of the Divine 
law altogether, I venture to assert that there has 
never been a human conscience awakened in any 
measure to the deserts of sin, which has not in- 
stinctively felt the need of such a sacrifice. In 
thousands of instances, even with the strongest 
representations of the infinity, value, and efficacy of 
the atonement, it requires the utmost effort to get 
the trembling soul to rest its hopes on the merits of 
even this Divine sacrifice, and ail history proves 
that in no other way have sinful consciences ever 
been able to find rest. 

Third: The Christ of God is an accepted sac- 
rifice. 

This has been attested by His resurrection from 
the dead. God has declared to the three worlds, of 
angels, men, and devils, that justice is satisfied, and 
that henceforth no guilty son or daughter of Adam 
need despair of His mercy and salvation — the ac- 
cepted sacrifice for all men, and we know not for 
what other beings. How far-reaching its benefits 



32 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



are we cannot tell, — perhaps to distant planets and 
suns ; any way they reach to you and to me. 

In view of this sacrifice God waits to pardon your 
guilt, cleanse your pollution, transform your char- 
acter, and hallow, and beautify, and utilize your 
life. You have no longer any excuse for groaning 
under the dominion of sin. He calls you forth from 
the tomb of your depravity ; He calls you out of the 
dungeon of your guilt, and offers you a full and free 
acquittal, with all the resources necessary for a new 
life of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy 
Ghost. 

Fourth : The Christ of God is an embodiment of 
Sis Father's righteousness. 

He will only administer the benefits of His sacri- 
fice in accordance with the Divine standard of right. 

o 

He will do no violence either to the Government of 
God or the nature of man. Although love was the 
supreme ingredient of His character, yet we hear no 
words of an indiscriminate charity dropping from 
His lips, no excuse of sin, no palliation of the guilt 
of enlightened transgressors of His Father's law, or 
impudent presumers on His Father's forbearance. 
He hated iniquity as supremely as He loved righteous 
ness. The great end and aim of His coming was the 
regeneration and restoration of man to the mind and 
will of God ; hence He confirmed the first and great- 
est commandment, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and 
with all thy mind, and with all thy strength." 
Fifth: The Christ of God claims to be the 



ITS FALSE CHPJSTS. 



33 



Sovereign of all whom He saves. He tells us, if men 
keep not His words — clo not obey Him — they are 
none of His; and He claims absolute inward and 
outward obedience to His precepts every hour of 
every day of all the life of every one who professes 
to be His subject. 

My friends, have you accepted this Christ ? Do 
you know Him as your Divine Almighty Deliverer 
from the strength and power of sin ? Have you cast 
your weary soul on Him as your sacrifice, claiming 
freedom from the condemnation of the past ? Have 
you the witness of His Spirit that this sacrifice has 
been accepted by God on your behalf, and does the 
answering cry, " Abba, Father," go up from your 
soul? Are vou Hying in the regeneration of His 
Spirit, carefully seeking to fulfill all righteousness, 
commending your every act to Him in faithful obedi- 
ence ? Does he reign over you as the sovereign of 
your heart and life, and do you hold everything you 
possess, — yourself, your children, your property, 
your time, your influence, your reputation, your 
life, your death, — subservient to His will and in- 
terests? If so, happy are you, and your example 
before men and your influence in the world will be 
worthy of the professed followers of the " Christ of 
God." 



LECTURE II. 



Popular Christianity: Its Mock Salvation 
v. A Real Deliverance from Sin. 



I suppose that most of those present this after- 
noon are aware that the subject is " A mock salva- 
tion in comparison with Christ's salvation " — deliv- 
erance from sin. As I said last week with respect 
to a Christian, so I may say this week with respect 
to salvation, that there will be no difference of 
opinion as to the need of our race for a salvation of 
some sort. This must be too patent to need argu- 
ment, that our world is disordered, disjointed, morally 
diseased, and that it needs some sort of regenerating, 
rectifying process, if society is not to be disorgan- 
ized by its own corruptions, or sunk forever in the 
hell of its iniquities. Every man knows this to his 
own hurt. All men have a personal consciousness 
of being wrong, whether they believe in a Divine 
revelation or not ; nay, whether they believe in God 
or not. I do not think I have spoken to more than 
half a dozen people in my life — and I have spoken, 
I suppose, to some thousands of different classes — 
who have maintained that they were right. Even infi- 
34 



ITS MOCK SALTATION, 



35 



dels, when you face them with the question, " Are 
you right ? are you living according to the dictates 
of your judgment and conscience ? " dare not say 
that they are. The universal cry of our poor hu- 
manity is, " Oh, wretched man that I am ! " whether 
it be looking for any Divine deliverance or not. 
Men everywhere know that they are not living ac- 
cording to their own conceptions of right, and 
therefore they have a sense of self-condemnation ; 
and this asserts itself in spite of their arguments 
and excuses. It is of no avail to the soul' tormented 
with a sense of guilt to say, " The woman tempted 
me," or " I was under the pressure of great fear, or 
shame, or dread " ; this is no real palliation. Hence 
the universal fear to face the future, the disinclina- 
tion to think about God, the predisposition to blind 
the eyes to the proofs of His existence, and to 
harden the heart against His claims. Truly, con- 
science makes cowards of us all until cleansed from 
dead works, purified and restored to the throne of 
the soul. 

Further : not only do all men feel this sense of 
wrong in themselves, but they expect wrong in 
others. Even parents anticipate and provide for it 
in their children. Every parent knows that there is 
a tendency in his children to go astray from the 
very first moment of accountability. He knows 
that there is in his child a tendency to speak lies as 
soon as it can speak at all, that there is a tendency 
to perverse tempers and wicked passions. Hence 
wise parents universally recognize, whether they 



36 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



make any pretentions to Christianity or not, the 
necessity of family government and careful training 
in order to check, counteract, or eradicate, as the 
case may be, these tendencies to evil ; and thus they 
acknowledge the necessity for a certain kind of sal- 
vation in their children, and they recognize also 
this fact, that if they do not attempt to work out 
this salvation, the children will bring them to wreck 
and ruin. A child left to itself brings its mother to 
shame ; we know that sadly too well. 

There is the same recognition of the need of a sal- 
vation amongst men of the world. Every intelligent 
business man goes on the assumption that he has to 
encounter wrong in the hearts and conduct of his 
neighbors ; in fact, the world takes it as a sign of in- 
telligence that a business man goes on this assump- 
tion, and would call him a fool if he did not. He 
knows that he is beset on all hands by those who 
will over-reach, cheat, and ruin him for anything 
that they care, if they can promote their own inter- 
ests by so doing. Hence the necessity for a kind of 
legal salvation, in the form of agreements and bonds, 
between man and man. 

I hear a good deal about this in connection with 
our negotiations for buildings, which we are carrying 
on every day. "When proprietors and agents have 
made certain offers or promises, the General says, 
" Have you got it in black and white ? " and if the 
answer is " No," then he says, " What is the use of 
it?" Alas! we know only too well that it is of no 
use ; and I am sorry to say that this is as true of 



ITS MOCK SALVATION. 



37 



many professing Christians as of worldly men. Why 
is this ? Because a man's word is nothing in the 
great majority of instances. Hence the necessity 
for lawyers, magistrates, and judges ; and even these 
have to be tied down by law, and watched and super- 
vised, lest even the judges should turn traitors to 
justice, and, for the sake of bribes or party considera- 
tions, sell the interests of those whom they ought to 
protect. Here again is the recognition of the neces- 
sity for a salvation for these very people who are 
placed as guardians of public justice and the adminis- 
trators of the law. This salvation many of them 
specially require when dealing with the poor Salva- 
tion Army. By the way, it is a curious fact that 
such is the impression produced by the Army, that 
again and again politicians on both sides of the At- 
lantic have laughingly represented various combina- 
tions of statesmen as " salvation armies." How 
often do politicians indifferent lands represent their 
countries as in some particular, verging on ruin, 
and needing a "salvation"? What is this but a 
great public confession, made by those best capa- 
ble of judging, that whole nations are misled ? for in 
these days of popular government most people have 
to be cajoled into voting to their own injury. More- 
over, we have it from the highest public authority 
that nation after nation goes astray on questions 
vitally affecting their highest good : and it is com- 
monly asserted that they are deliberately led astray 
by men who care only for their own interests, and 
so contrive to delude their fellow men wholesale. 



38 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



It is evident that but for these temporal salvations 
to which I have alluded, the world would be unen- 
durable for us to live in. You know this. You 
know that it is not safe for a man to trust his neigh- 
bor — nay, in many cases, even his brother; "for 
there is none upright among men, . . . they 
hunt every man his brother with a net." 

Here, then, is the patent, palpable necessity for a 
salvation. Now, the question is, What sort of sal- 
vation meets the necessities of the case? What 
kind of a salvation does God our Maker, who knows 
what He meant us to be at the first, and who knows 
perfectly what we have become through sin, — what 
kind of a salvation does He propose for humanity ? 

I answer, He proposes a salvation that deals with 
and removes the cause of all this wrong and woe. 

Our Saviour, in Matthew xv. 19, goes to the root 
of the evil when He says : " For out of the heart 
proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornica- 
tions, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." And the 
apostle also, in Galatians v. 19 : "Now the works of 
the flesh are manifest, which are these ; adultery, 
fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, 
witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, 
strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunk- 
enness, revellings, and such like : of the which I tell 
you before, as I have also told you in time past, that 
they which do such things shall not inherit the 
kingdom of God." Whether you believe in the 
revelation or not, you will agree with the fact that 
these are the works coming everywhere from the 



ITS MOCK SALVATION. 



39 



evil heart of man; there is no getting away from 
that. Then I say that God proposes to deal with 
and remove the cause — the wrong state of the 
heart. If all men's hearts could be set right to-day, 
we should need no more temporal, legal or political 
salvation, lawyers, police, magistrates, or judges ; for 
a salvation that renews the heart would render all 
these unnecessary. 

God's plan of salvation in dealing with the inter- 
nal malady embraces all its external consequences. 

It is evident then that any salvation which does 
not deal with this leprosy of evil in the heart is a 
mockery. 

As I showed last week that there are, alas, many 
false, delusive, disappointing christs; so I have to 
show this week that there are many make-believe, 
mock salvations, which only deceive, disappoint, and 
damn those who trust in them. As I walk about 
the world, and as I look at professing Christians, my 
soul cries : O God, make haste to help us to raise up 
a holy people, in order to show the world what sal- 
vation really means, for they do not know. They 
are utterly befogged and bewildered, and I do not 
wonder. 

We will now look at a few of these mock salva- 
tions, for they are legion. First, I want to premise 
that anything, no matter how valuable in itself, 
which is put in the place of something for ivhich it is no 
substitute, is a mockery. For instance, here is a stone, 
very valuable in its right place — especially if it be 
in one of the shops in Oxford Street ; but offered to 



40 



POPULAR CHBISTIAXITY. 



a starving man in a desert it is a mockery ; because, 
valuable as it is, the man cannot eat it, and he will 
die notwithstanding that the stone, worth a thousand 
pounds, lies at his feet, because it is no substitute 
for bread. 

Now, there are endless substitutions for salvation. 
It has been the devil's plan from the beginning to 
make imitations of God's best things. Perhaps it is 
a necessity that evil must try its power upon all 
God's creatures as it did upon Adam ; we do not 
know. Probably there was no other way of work- 
ing out the transcendant value and beauty of good- 
ness than by allowing it to come in contact with 
evil: if this be so, of course it applies to God's reme- 
dies for sin ; anyway, the devil has done his worst 
on'these. God's plan of salvation is at present in 
this crucible. The devil is trying to circumvent it, 
and his favorite plan for doing this is by forging 
plenty of mockeries. 

We will look at these under four divisions — Sal- 
vations of theory ; salvations of ceremony ; salvations of 
mere belief and the salvation of unbelief. 

First, let us look at salvations of theory. You see 
it matters very little what kind of a theory a man 
has ; if it be substituted for salvation it becomes a 
mockery, — a true theory no less than a false one. 

The devil no doubt has a correct theory ; I fancy 
that he is a much better theologian than many 
Christians, but he remains the old serpent still. 

It is doubtless better to have right opinions than 
wrong ones, but the best opinions will not save a 



ITS MOCK SALVATION. 



41 



man. I am afraid there is a great deal of preaching 
that amounts to a mere putting of the different 
theories about salvation, instead of persuading men 
to come to Christ and be saved. 

The main idea of much of the preaching of this 
day seems to be that of teaching people — instruct- 
ing them, — which too often results in hardening 
their hearts, and finding them an easier way down 
to perdition than they would have found without it. 
Unfortunately a man feels more comfortable when 
he has been to a place of worship and heard a fine 
theory about salvation, then he would if he had not 
been, although he may be no nearer being saved. 
All preaching, Sunday-school teaching, tract writing 
and distribution, or any other instrumentality which 
has not for its end the immediate salvation of the 
people, only leads them to trust in mere teaching, 
which is a mockery. It is like giving a dissertation 
on the relative value of a vegetarian and an animal 
diet to a man dying of hunger. What good will 
your dissertation do unless you get the man to eat 
of the food about which you are descanting. And, 
unless your teaching induces men and women to eat 
of the Bread of life for themselves, it is a mockery! 
And yet how few preachers or teachers, how few 
religious workers have this as their main idea — the 
end at which they aim. You can see the want of it 
in the way they fail to bring men to Christ there 
and then. How my heart has ached over this aim- 
less, pointless preaching, I could not express. Per- 
haps, when I have had the rare opportunity of a 



42 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



Sunday's rest, I have gone to some near place of 
worship, hoping to be refreshed or stimulated, and 
to see sinners saved, or at least convicted, but alas! 
I could only weep as I listened to dissertations on 
some creed or doctrine which had probably been be- 
lieved and approved by everybody present since they 
were children, while the poor empty souls were left 
starving for want. I have felt like saying to the 
minister, " My brother, if you have nothing better 
than this to offer, let us have a prayer meeting and 
get something direct from the great Father himself, 
without your intervention." W ould to God there 
were more preachers in the fix of a Baptist minister 
in a town where we are just now having a glorious 
work, who has been so stirred up and awakened to 
his responsibilities, that, on a recent occasion when 
he had read his text, he broke down, weeping, which 
had more effect than all the sermons he had preached 
during the years he had been in that town. His 
people wept too, and many of them got converted 
over again. I wish that a few thousands of the 
ministers of this kingdom could be brought to a 
similar state of mind before next Sunday; what a 
commotion there would be in the land, and what a 
stir in hell, ah, and in heaven too ! 

But further, I want you to note that any theory 
which teaches people to rest in a mere intellectual 
belief in the Scriptures, or any doctrines therein, 
while their souls are left in bondage to sin, is a 
mockery, and it is one of the most popular mockeries 
of this day. 



ITS MOCK SALVATION. 



43 



• Oil, Christians say, " Scatter the Word," and they 
have been scattering the Word for generations, 
spending thousands of pounds over it, and I could 
enlighten them as to what becomes of the Word in 
thousands of instances when it is scattered. We 
always get wrong when we depart from God's way, 
and this is not His way. It is not written that "it 
pleased God to save by the distribution of Testa- 
ments, those who believe," but it pleased God to 
save by the foolishness of preaching — by the living 
testimony of living men — by those who embody the 
word in their experience and lives, and then go and 
speak it in the power of the Spirit to others. This 
is the sort of preaching God has commanded. 
Study and love the written Word as much as you 
like, but remember that the letter killeth, and that 
you will never save men by merely giving them the 
letter ; and I point to the miserable results of this 
plan as proof of the truth of what I say. 

I fear the giving away of texts and tracts has 
proved a most successful stratagem of Satan for 
enabling Christians to salve their consciences in re- 
sisting the Spirit's urgings to a bold., straightfor- 
ward testimony for Christ. It is so much easier 
politely to hand one of these silent messengers, than 
tp make a determined onslaught on the sinner's con- 
science, and to try to persuade him there and then 
to flee from the wrath to come. Not only is it easier 
for the Christian, but it is also much more endura- 
ble for the unsaved ; consequently he is willing to 
make a compromise, and in order to escape from 



44 



JPOPULAB CHRISTIANITY. 



straight, plain, personal dealing, lie will pocket a 
tract, laughing in his sleeve at the cowardice of the 
giver ; because he knows perfectly well that Chris- 
tians, to be consistent with what they profess, ought 
to make a desperate effort for the immediate salva- 
tion of every unsaved man and woman with whom 
they come in contact. The world wants living 
epistles who will live, weep, act, suffer, and, if need 
be, die before the people. The testimony of such 
witnesses will prove a living word indeed, sharper 
than any two-edged sword. 

I say that the knowledge of and belief in this 
whole Bible, from beginning to end, if substituted 
for actual, personal salvation, will prove as great a 
mockery as any other sentimental belief. 

No mere intellectual beliefs can save men, because 
right opinions do not make right hearts. Alas, we 
all know the little practical effect opinions have on 
character. Look around you. Do you know any 
man who is not a thorough intellectual believer in 
chastity being better for a man, or a woman, in the 
end, than uncleanness ? Is there any wicked, 
profligate young man who, if you could take him 
aside and talk fairly to him, would not tell you that 
he believed that chastity was the best for a man, 
and yet you have only to look at him to see that he 
is a sepulchre of uncleanness and debauchery. 
What avails his intellectual belief in chastity while 
he is the slave of his lusts? What better is the 
man who believes in chastity and sins, than a man 
who does not believe in chastity and sins? As a 



ITS MOCK SALVATION. 



45 



French infidel, answering a caviller against holiness, 
said the other day, " You believe and sin, I do not 
believe and sin : where is the difference ? It seems 
to me I am the better of the two/' Exactly, for 
however true or grand a man's beliefs, of what use 
are they if he does not act them out? 64 Can faith 
save him ? " Kay, verily, but such a faith can damn 
him. 

Further, any theory which leads men to suppose 
that they are safe without being actually saved is 
the most dreadful of all. 

Such a theory adds an intellectual opiate to the 
deceit of the heart, and prevents the truth from 
troubling the conscience. Xow, the only use of ap- 
pealing to the understandings of the unregenerate, 
is, that through their understandings you may get 
at their hearts, but if Satan has " blinded their 
minds" by some intellectual opiate, there is no 
chance. The understanding is darkened, the con- 
science seared, and the soul paralyzed. These are the 
worst people in the world to preach to ; when I had 
to preach to them, how I groaned many a time for a 
congregation of heathen. I have found such now 
in the Salvation Army — I mean, a people whose 
understandings are not darkened by these false 
theories and intellectual conceits. One can get the 
light in through their heads into their hearts, and 
this is the reason of our success with them : and is 
not this the reason why the publicans and the 
harlots have always gone into the kingdom of God, 
while the natural children of the kingdom have been 
left out? 



46 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



A man is either saved or not ; the fact is indepen- 
dent of his theory, and it is of comparatively little 
consequence what his theory may be if he be saved. 
Hence many savages and Catholics have rejoiced in 
a consciousness of pardon, while many evangelicals 
have never known it. A man is either under the 
dominion of sin, or else he is delivered from it. If 
he is under the dominion of sin, what an awful 
theory is that which makes him believe he is saved. 
Could the devil have invented a more damning 
theory than that? And yet, alas ! alas! he allures 
millions to destruction through it, who otherwise 
would take alarm and begin to seek salvation. He 
says to all the qualms of conscience and the pangs 
of remorse, " You are all right, you believe this or 
the other, your faith is orthodox, you are safe," fre- 
quently quoting separated or mutilated texts to 
back up his Mng insinuations, such as — " By faith 
ye are saved ; " " He that believeth shall be saved ; " 
" You are complete in Him," etc. This latter phrase 
has come to express, in numbers of instances, the 
most utter ruin to which the human soul can be 
brought. " Complete in Christ"! complete with- 
out any true repentance, without any offering of the 
heart, without the slightest change inward or out- 
ward, " complete in . Him," while living without 
Him, and having no conscious connection with 
Him whatever; complete without losing one : evil 
feature of the godless life, without receiving one 
grace of any kind, without doing or siiffering jany- 
thing, except perhaps a whispered " I believe " ; 



ITS MOCK SAL YATIOX. 



47 



complete all in a minute, since somebody pointed to 
a text with which perhaps the poor victim had been 
familiar all his life. Complete in Christ with a 
gnawing consciousness at the heart that is as sinful, 
as empty, as powerless, and as joyless as ever : com- 
plete as a poor corpse would be complete, if painted 
and dressed in the clothes of a living man ! May 
God save you from any such mock salvation as this. 

Further, any theory that leads men to trust in 
general confessions and prayers for salvation, is a 
mockery. 

How many thousands of people every Sunday 
confess to being "miserable sinners." and cry to 
God to have mercy upon them, without the slightest 
appreciation of the meaning of the words they utter. 
They feel better and safer because of these confes- 
sions and prayers, whereas their prayers remove 
them further, rather than bring them nearer, to any 
real salvation. What is the use of prayer that pro- 
duces no effect, that brings no answer '? Here is a 
mother whose boy is condemned to die : the father 
goes to the Queen to beg for his life. When he re- 
turns, the mother says. " Weil, have you suc- 
ceeded? " He answers, I have put up my petition 
before the Queen." ,; Well, but what is the answer ?" 
" Oh, you must not expect a direct answer : I 
have no answer, nor have I any reason to believe I 
shall get one. but I have put up my petition." The 
mother would say, ' ; That is a delusion ; I want to 
know whether my boy is going to be released : I 
cannot sleep in my bed till I know what the answer 



48 



POPULAR CHBIST1AXITY. 



is ! " Now, I say, people who go on petitioning 
God for years together, never concerning themselves 
about the answer, or even expecting one, show that 
they are utterly insincere, and consequently obnox- 
ious to God, and yet there are thousands of such 
people, who go to and fro to our churches and 
chapels every Sunday like a door on its hinges. 
They say, " O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable 
sinners,** but they have no real desire for His mercy, 
no recognition even of the necessity for the forgive- 
ness of sins, no concern about living to please Him, 
no idea of what repentance or salvation really 
means ! Is it not manifest that such hypocritical 
confessions and prayers render those who engage in 
them more impervious to the truth, and more ob- 
livious to any true idea of salvation, than they would 
be without them ? God says such prayers are an 
abomination to Him. There is only one kind of 
prayer from an unconverted soul which is acceptable 
to God, and that is the prayer that is wrung out of 
the heart by anguish for sin. 

Further, another mock salvation is presented in 
the shape of ceremonies and sacraments. These were 
only intended as outward signs of an inward 
spiritual reality, whereas men are taught that by go- 
ing through them or partaking of them, they are to 
be saved. Amongst these may be classed Baptism, 
the last Supper, and the ceremonials of ancient or 
modern churches. 

Oh, the thousands of souls who are resting their 
hopes of salvation on the fact that they have been 



ITS MOCK SALVATION. 49 

baptized, not only such as believe in the palpable 
delusion of baptismal regeneration, but amongst or- 
dinary church and chapel-going people. As I look 
at our Army congregations in rinks, theatres, and 
other similar places, and note the signs of sin, de- 
bauchery, and crime on many of their faces, I say to 
myself, I suppose all these people have been bap- 
tized; but I do not think there are many thieves, or 
harlots, or drunkards, or openly immoral people who 
claim baptismal regeneration. Thank God! It is 
only genteel sinners Vho can bring themselves to 
believe in such a palpable sham, and yet, if baptism 
possesses any efficacy, it should be as effective in the 
one class of sinners as in the other. 

What an inveterate tendency there is in the 
human heart to trust in outward forms, instead of 
seeking the inward grace ! And where this is the 
case, what a hindrance, rather than help, have these 
forms proved to the growth, nay, to the very exis- 
tence, of that spiritual life which constitutes the 
real and only force of Christian experience ! 

It is a calamity deeply to be deplored that men 
should thus put the form in the place of the power, 
but they have always been doing so. It is only an- 
other species of that idolatry which has prevailed from 
the foundation of the world. Take, for instance, 
the brazen serpent. All are familiar with the story 
of that miraculous intervention of Jehovah on be- 
half of the Israelites dying from the poisonous bites 
of the fiery flying serpents, sent as a punishment for 
their rebellious murmuring. God directed Moses to 



50 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



exhibit a brazen serpent on a pole, and to proclaim 
to the bitten multitudes that all who would look to 
it should be healed. Thousands looked, and as they 
looked were cured. In memory of that wonderful 
deliverance, and doubtless also as an emblem of the 
coming Saviour, that serpent was preserved ; but 
when, in the years that followed, the people came 
to attach undue value to the ceremony of viewing 
it, — burning incense before it, with idolatrous wor- 
ship, — Hezekiah, jealous for the honor of Him 
whom this form was only intended to shadow forth, 
called it " Nehustan," i. e., a piece of brass, which it 
really was, breaking it in pieces and casting it away 
with the trees of the groves and the altars of the 
high places which the people had desecrated by 
idolatry. Now, we have nothing to say against 
forms ; but they are only, as it were, the bodies in 
which spiritual ideas and purposes are manifested, 
and without life they are useless, and worse than 
useless. 

When forms are exalted, and idolized, and trusted 
in, no matter how beautiful in themselves, or how 
Divine in their origin, they become " Nehustan," a£ 
a piece of brass, or a piece of bread, or a bowl of 
water. As the apostle said of circumcision, when 
the Jews had put it in the place of righteousness, 
" Neither is that circumcision which is outward in 
the flesh. Circumcision is that of the heart, in the 
spirit, and not in the letter ; whose praise is not of 
men, but of God." And although originally or- 
dained by God, he says again : " Circumcision is 



ITS MOCK SALVATION. 



51 



nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the 
keeping of the commandments of God." 

We feel persuaded that if Paul were here now, 
and could see the deadly consequences which have 
arisen from the idolatrous regard given to what are 
called the Sacraments of the Supper and of Baptism, 
he would say precisely the same with respect to 
them ; for even if Jesus Christ intended them to be 
permanent institutions (against which there are 
very strong arguments, as put forth by many most 
devoted and intelligent Christians ever since the days 
of the apostles, amongst whom are the " Friends " of 
our own time), such is the awful abuse to which 
these ceremonies have been subjected, that we feel 
sure Paul would say Baptism is nothing, and the 
ceremony of the Lord's Supper is nothing, apart 
from keeping the commandments of God, especially 
that great and all-comprehensive commandment, 
64 Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart, and mind, and soul, and strength, and thy 
neighbor as thyself." 

Christians often say to me, when I put this view 
before them, " Ah, but you have no authority to 
remit the Supper, because the Lord said we were to 
take it in remembrance of Him till He come ! " I 
answer that He left the taking of it at all perfectly 
discretional ; and as to its continuance, that entirely 
depends on which coming He alluded to. 
" Friends," and many others of the most spiritual 
and deeply taught Christians of all times, have be- 
lieved that He then referred, as in so many other 

Xote. — So far as Mrs. Booth questions the Divine authority, 
validity and usefulness of the Sacraments of the Church, the 



52 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



places which are generally misunderstood, to His 
coming at the end of the Jewish dispensation. Any 
way, our Lord, who had long before said to the 
woman of Samaria, " The hour cometh when ye 
shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem 
(in any special sense) worship the Father. . . . 
But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true 
worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and 
in truth," anywhere and everywhere, could not 
have intended to teach that God could be more ac- 
ceptably or profitably worshipped through any par- 
ticular form or ceremony than without such form or 
ceremony, and especially if there were weighty 
reasons on the other side for rejecting it ! ! Neither 
is it credible to a spiritually enlightened mind that 
He who said, " If a man love Me, he will keep My 
words, and My Father will love him, and we (I and 
My Father) will come unto him, and make our abode 
with him," could have intended to teach that 
through the earthly medium of bread and wine His 
people were to remember Him on whom their 
thoughts were to be constantly concentrated, or to 
commune with Him in any special sense above that 
in which they were to commune with Him always 
and everywhere. The water which Jesus gives, 
and to which alone He attaches any importance, is 
that which is " in us a well of water springing up 
into everlasting life " ; and the wine which He 
values and promises to drink with us in His Father's 
kingdom, is that wine of the kingdom which is 
righteouness, and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. 

American Publishers disagree with her. But they endorse 
her condemnation of their too common abuse. 



ITS MOCK SALVATIOX. 



53 



Friends, do you partake of these sacraments ? If 
not, rivers of earthly water, vineyards of wine, will 
avail you nothing ; they will be as " ISTehustan." 

If we were to have any binding forms in the new 
and spiritual kingdom in which all forms were to 
find fulfillment, it seems to me that there is a great 
deal more ground for insisting on washing of one 
another's feet than for either of those already re- 
ferred to ; and in this we can see a great practical 
lesson on the human side which our Lord actually 
laid down. How comes it, I wonder, that many of 
those who regard the former with such sanctimoni- 
ous reverence, can utterly, and without scruple* set 
aside the latter? I fear that human pride and 
priestly assumption must be held largely responsi- 
ble. 

Further, nothing is more evident to all who have 
any acquaintance with the history of Christianity, 
than that the undue value set upon these ceremonies 
has been one of the greatest hindrances to the ex- 
tension of Christianity. Again and again have its 
valiant warriors paused in their triumphal progress, 
and turned aside from the battle with the great 
forces of evil, to quarrel amongst themselves con- 
cerning these mere externals. 

When I was in Ireland, some of the oldest and 
most experienced Christians who took part in that 
great revival some twenty-five years ago told me 
that a great proportion of the results of that won 
derful work of God were lost, in consequence of a 
controversy about water baptism. Do you wonder 



54 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



that we of the Salvation Army shrink from the pos- 
sibility of such a sacrifice of the greater to the less 
— especially when we are backed up by the great 
apostle of us Gentiles thanking God that he bap- 
tized none of his early converts, and for the very 
same reason, namely, because they were making the 
ceremony a cause of controversy ! 

Further, what can be the value of imitating the 
marchings and vestments and songs of the ancient 
Jewish Church ? We are not accepted in the beloved 
Jews, and if these ceremonies had become, as God 
said they were, a stink in His nostrils because of the 
backsliding unbelief and hardness of heart of His 
ancient people, how much greater must the offence 
of them be when adopted by impenitent, infidel, and 
rebellious Gentiles. Neither can it be any less re- 
pugnant to the mind of God, that spiritually uncir- 
cumcised Philistines should dare to put their hands 
to his ark, by anticipating the signs, ordinances, and 
alleluias of the Church triumphant. What have 
such people to do with the songs of martyrs and 
confessors, or with the alleluias of the angel bands 
who stand before the Lord in His temple ? " Rebel- 
lion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is 
as iniquity and idolatry." And yet what multitudes 
who are hardening their hearts and stiffening their 
necks every day against the claims of God and of 
His truth, dare to bow down to what they call the 
table of the Lord and unite in what they believe to 
be the songs of saints and angels. The first qualifi- 
cation for participating in any spiritual exercises or 



ITS MOCK SALVATION. 



55 



ceremonies, is the renewal of the heart by the Holy 
Ghost. If you could have the very same ceremonial 
which they have in heaven, with angels as your 
ministers, unless you had the spirit of it within, 
it would profit you nothing. " Though I speak with 
the tongues of men and of angels, and have not the 
love of God, I am nothing." And our Lord said, 
with respect to some of His hearers, "Then shall ye 
begin to say, We have eaten and drunk in Thy pres- 
ence, and Thou hast taught in our streets. But He 
shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; 
depart from Me, all ye workers of iniquity ; " show- 
ing that even where Christ Himself was the preacher, 
if the heart remained under the bondage of sin and 
in the gall of bitterness, the hearers would only 
inherit greater condemnation, and sink into a 
deeper hell. 

I must not omit to say a word here on the salvation 
of unbelief, notwithstanding that I purpose to en- 
large upon it at a future time. The most astounding 
theory of all the false theories about salvation, and 
also the latest novelty propagated, alas, from Chris- 
tian pulpits and through the Christian press, as well 
as from avowedly infidel platforms, is that man is to 
be ultimately saved from his errors and iniquities, 
and especially from all trouble concerning them, by 
a simple negation. He is to dismiss from his mind 
all the creeds, all idea of any precise revelation, and 
to get light from any natural earthly source he can, 
especially from the modern lights, who are respon- 
sible for this new theory. He is to throw his mind 



56 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



back as far as is possible towards heathenism, nay, 
further back than those enlightened heathen philoso- 
phers to whom I referred in my first lecture, for he 
must on no account even sigh after anything super- 
natural or Divine. He is to believe in himself and 
in humanity; especially the future of humanity — 
seeing that there are so many ugly facts about its 
present. Thus he will have no more difficulties, 
sighings, or cryings ! 

He is to put away everything unpleasant and un- 
sightly as far as he can, even if it professes to be the 
Word of God, and possessing his soul (no, I beg par- 
don, his mind) in patience, to wait and hope till the 
law of evolution has transformed our poor sin- 
stricken and groaning earth into a heathen paradise ! 

What a striking reproduction is this modern rev- 
elation, only in a new fashion, of the words of fools 
thousands of years ago, who used to say, " How doth 
God know ? and is there knowledge in the Most 
High?" and who " consider not that they do evil." 

Truly we may say of all these theories, ceremonies, 
prayers, faiths, and unbeliefs, which are palmed on 
man as substitutes for salvation from sin, Vanity of 
vanities, cruel mockeries, making destruction doubly 
sure. 

Poor humanity still cries out, " Who will show us 
any good?" Miserable comforters are ye all, leav- 
ing us still on the dunghill, covered with wounds ? 
bruises, and putrefying sores. What shall we do 

TO BE SAVED ? 



ITS MOCK SALVATION 



57 



DELIVERANCE FROM SIX. 

Let us now consider the character of that salvation 
proposed by God for our race. The salvation of God 
embraces deliverance, restoration, preservation, and 
glorification. 

Of course the mere idea of salvation supposes some 
enemy, bondage, disease, or danger ; there can be no 
salvation where there is nothing to be saved from. 
All the saviours raised by God for Israel during their 
national existence were actual deliverers of their 
people from their enemies, otherwise they could not 
have been saviours. Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Nehe- 
miah, and many others, were real deliverers of their 
people ; they delivered from the outward conse- 
quences of sin ; but the great distinguishing feature 
of our Joshua is that He delivers His people from 
their spiritual enemies, and from the power of sin 
itself. Where there is no deliverance there can be 
no salvation. What a mockery and a delusion it is 
for a man to profess to be saved, while he is groaning 
under the power of his spiritual enemies. If you are 
under the dominion of sin, you are yet an utter 
stranger to the salvation of God. 

First : Salvation implies restoration. 

Salvation to a man who is sick means restoration to 
health; to a man who is drowning, restoration to dry 
land; to a man dying, restoration to life; to a man 
on the verge of bankruptcy it means liquidation of 
his debts, and restoration to solvency. 

The common sense of mankind has prevented any 



58 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY, 



theoretical deliverances or mock salvations for these 
temporal maladies and destructions, but our great 
adversary, who liethin wait to deceive, has succeeded, 
as we have already seen, in deluding men and women, 
as to the reality of Salvation when applied to the 
soul. But the salvation of God is no less real and 
practical for the soul than any of these temporal sal- 
vations are for the body or the circumstances. 

What is man's disease ? Sin, badness, falseness, 
spiritual death. Salvation means restoration to 
goodness, to truth, to spiritual life, and to God. It 
means deliverance from inward evil, and renewal of 
the heart in righteousness and true holiness. It 
means the right adjustment of the faculties of the 
soul, bringing it into harmony with the laws of its 
own being, with the law of God, and with the 
rightful claims of its fellow beings. In short, it 
means being put eight in all its relations for time 
and for eternity. 

Second : Salvation implies preservation. 

In order to the well-being and happiness of a 
being who has been saved from any disaster or death, 
there must be a provision for his continuance in a 
state of health or safety. It would be a small mercy 
to save a man from drowning, if he were under the 
cruel necessity of throwing himself into the water 
again to-morrow ; and equally small would be the 
mercy of pardoning a sinner, and restoring him to a 
sense of peace and purity, if no provision had been 
made for his continuance in such a state of salva- 
tion. The salvation of God contemplates all the 



ITS MOCK SALVATION. 



59 



weaknesses and necessities of fallen human nature ; 
hence the Christ of God becomes 4, the author of 
eternal salvation to all them that obey Him." He 
not only restores, but He promises to dwell in His 
people as the power of an endless life, enabling 
them to purify their hearts by faith, to love God 
with all their soul and strength, and to offer them- 
selves as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable in 
His sight. He promises to empower them to resist 
the devil, to keep themselves unspotted from the 
world, and to fight manfully under the banner of 
His cross till death. 

Do you ask for living witnesses of such a salva- 
tion? Thank God, there are thousands who can 
testify that they have passed from darkness to light, 
that they have been delivered out of the hands of all 
their enemies, and are now enabled to serve God, 
walking before Him in righteousness and holiness 
day by day — thousands, not of genteel, refined, 
religiously trained people, such as most of you here 
to-day, but from amongst the most ignorant, neglect- 
ed, besotted, and openly wicked of earth's popula- 
tions. They stand forward, an exceeding great 
army of witnesses to the reality of the salvation of 
God, and to the power of His Christ to deliver, to 
restore, to purify, and to keep all those who really 
receive and obey Him. 

Third: The salvation of God embraces also glori- 
fication. 

How do we know ? Well, first, reasoning from 
analogy, and seeing that the great change wrought 
in true saints is in the soul, and that it manifests 



60 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



itself in spiritual and heavenly instincts, dispositions, 
and aspirations, which, do not find their full develop- 
ment or satisfaction in this life, we conclude that 
there is a future and more congenial sphere for such 
development and. satisfaction. 

Secondly, we have the most satisfactory evidence 
which mortals can give, of future glorification in the 
fact that many are glorified before our eyes in 
death. Amidst the humiliation, pains, and agonies 
of physical dissolution, we see the soul emerging 
from the wreck of its physical environment, 
triumphing over him who hath the power of death, 
and in regal majesty pluming its wings for its final 
flight, and in view of such victory, human reason, no 
less than Divine revelation, declares: "Death is 
swallowed up in victory.*' 

Are there any here who want salvation ? Come 
and try our Saviour Lord. He can cure your 
disease, extract the poison out of your heart, and 
make you new creatures! We testify that He has 
done this for some of us on this platform : whereas 
we once were the children of wrath, because the 
children of sin, even as others, now He has made us 
the children of God and of light, enabling us to seek 
those things that are above. 

Consistently with our profession, we consecrate 
ourselves, our whole being, our children, influence, 
time, life, and, if need be, death, to the pressing of 
this salvation on the attention and acceptance of 
our fellow-men. AVe make all things bow down 
before this unbending resolution, to seek and save 
the lost. 



LECTURE III. 



Popular Christianity : Its Sham Compassion 
v. the Dying Loye of Christ. 



THE SHAM COMPASSION. 

Benevolence has come somewhat into fashion 
of late. It has become the correct thing to do the 
slums, since the Prince of Wales did them; and this 
general idea of caring in some way or degree for the 
poor and wretched has extended itself even into the 
region of creeds, so that we have now many schemes 
for the salvation of mankind without a real Saviour. 

Do not misunderstand me. I have no objection 
— nay, I rejoice in any real good being done for any- 
body, much more for the poor and suffering — I 
have no objection that a large society of intelligent 
Christians should take up so noble an object as that 
of caring for stray dogs, providing it does not inter- 
fere with caring for stray babies ! I desire not to 
find fault with what is good, but to point out the 
evil which, to my mind, so largely diminishes the 
satisfaction one would otherwise feel in much ben- 
evolent effort being put forth around us. As I said 
01 



62 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



at the beginning, the most precious stone given in- 
stead of bread is useless to a starving man. 

Surely nobody ever cared for poor suffering hu- 
manity so much as Jesus Christ. He gladly put 
forth his mighty power for the healing and feeding 
of the body, and He laid it down most distinctly 
that all who were true to Him must love the poor 
and give up their all for them in the same practical 
way in which He did ; but all this real brotherhood 
did not prevent His keeping the great truths of 
salvation ever to the front, and applying them as re- 
lentlessly to the poor as to the rich, and vice versa. 

But now in the name of Christ we are asked to 
believe either that the truest way to carry out His 
intentions is to ignore men's souls and care only for 
their bodies, or else to join with this sort of material 
salvation some theory that will practically get rid of 
all serious soul-need. 

THE FIRST SCHEME 

of salvation without a Christ provides for attention 
to all the needs of the body, ignoring the soul. 

This system has not only become more popular in 
many Christian circles than any of Christ's teach- 
ings, but some of its advocates actually go so far as 
to place it in favorable contrast with any spiritual 
work whatsoever, thus plainly intimating that those 
who really have the spirit of Christ show it better by 
devotion to these so-called practical ends than by 
what are assumed to be the less practical efforts 
which have regard to the world to come. This re- 



ITS SHAM COMPASSION. 



63 



ligion of bodily compassion may almost be said to 
have many sects devoted to it, each having its own 
favorite theory. 

First, we have the educationalists. 

These almost abandon the existing generation, but 
are confident of the results of their labors upon the 
coming one, such results being conveniently remote. 
But whether in connection with week-day or Sunday 
schools, this - plan has had at least the trial of one 
generation, with extremely bad results so far as we 
can judge. What a mockery of mankind to suppose 
or to teach that mere information can satisfy its 
wants, when the more information men get, the more 
clearly we see the reign of evil in the world, and the 
hopelessness of attaining to righteousness, so far as 
human power is concerned. Yet, strange to say, the 
efforts of an enormous proportion of the mission 
agencies at work are directly devoted to education, 
and the ablest heathen in the world to-day are those 
who have been carefully instructed in missionary 
institutions, and have used their education to obtain 
higher positions and greater influence in the world, 
with which they now the better withstand the gospel 
of Christ. 

Many of the more sensible Christians, perceiving 
how little ordinary education can do for the toiling 
masses, devote their attention to mechanical educa- 
tion, hoping to raise the position and prospects of 
the working classes by teaching them how to put a 
better finish on their daily tasks, although it is no- 
torious that the cleverest of workmen are frequently 



64 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



the greatest drunkards and the most miserable of 
men. 

Second on this list, for the regeneration of society, 
we have the house-builders. 

These are afflicted, and rightly so, with the over- 
crowded condition of working-class dwellings, and 
consider that all will be well when the people are 
better housed, shutting their eyes to the condition of 
multitudes who may be seen to-day living in the 
greatest sin and misery in well-built modern dwell- 
ings. Certainly it is a shameful scandal on those 
Christian landlords who keep their tenants in build- 
ings unfit for dogs ; but, after all, not so much more 
shameful than the conduct of those who, although 
aroused to the frightful condition of the masses, 
deliberately attempt their improvement on the same 
principles as if they were cattle, mainly by means of 
buildings which pay a liberal interest. No one could 
possibly be more thankful than I should to see the 
compassion which has of late found such loud ex- 
pression in words, embodied in some practical scheme 
for the provision of comfortable, wholesome houses 
for the poor, at such rental as they could comfortably 
pay ; but to provide this, with land under our pres- 
ent iniquitous system, will require a benevolence 
willing to " lend, hoping for nothing again. ^ 

Thirdly : Next comes the total abstinence plan for 
the salvation of the people. 

Amongst those who devote themselves to this 
sphere of labor there are some of whom I would 
speak with the greatest respect, namely, those who 



ITS SHAM COMPASSION. 



65 



perceive that in all these outward things there is no 
remedy without some radical internal change. The 
majority, however, observing that drink has more 
than anything else contributed to the degradation of 
the people, concentrate their efforts upon their de- 
liverance from this one evil — unquestionably a great 
temporal good — but we have only to look across the 
Channel to see abundant evidence that the people 
may be almost clear of drunkenness without being, 
for that reason, any nearer to Grod or true happiness. 
To soberize without saving can only be compared to 
the action of a set of people who should with heroic 
effort drag drowning men ashore, and then leave 
them lying all unconscious within reach of the waves. 

Fourthly : Another scheme of temporal salvation 
may be represented as rescuing work. 

There are benevolent efforts of many kinds put 
forth for the rescue of various classes of fallen or 
endangered people from their several perils, without 
a thought of placing them in spiritual safety. I am 
not speaking with the least desire to depreciate any 
of these efforts ; but what I would point out is, 
that while Christ held up for condemnation the 
priest who haughtily passed by the poor victim, 
He no less held up to condemnation the Levite 
who deliberately looked at his necessities and 
yet passed on. I desire to give every credit for true 
kindly feeling on behalf of the fallen or sufferings 
but it seems to me unaccountable that intelligent 
beings should look upon any form of human ruin 
without realizing that something must be clone 



66 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



within^ as well as without, in order to produce any 
lasting change for the better. 

Fifthly : Another plan of temporal salvation is the 
providing for needy children. 

This is one of the most favorite hobbies of benevo- 
lent people, and properly so, if it were only carried 
out in the right way. But how astounding, that 
people professing to revere and follow Christ should 
be capable of entertaining any schemes which under- 
take the guardianship of children, and yet which 
ignore their spiritual necessities ; which train and 
teach them how to get on in the world without 
God. Alas ! I know from personal experience and 
actual contact with some of the children turned out 
of orphan asylums of high reputation in Christian 
circles, that, so far as any real living acquaintance 
with the things of God, or any practical carrying 
out of the teachings of Jesus Christ, are concerned, 
they might as well have been brought up amongst 
infidels ; and I am by no means alone in this opin- 
ion. I have reason to believe, that in many such 
instances, nothing would be more highly resented 
than any attempt to make such children realize the 
willingness and sufficiency of a personal living 
Saviour to renew their hearts and to enable them to 
walk in obedience to His will, and to keep them- 
selves "unspotted from the world." Dry conven- 
tional dogmas and ceremonies constitute the only 
notion that thousands of such children have of the 
religion of Jesus Christ ; and no wonder, consider- 
ing the specimens they have had exhibited to them 



ITS SHAM COMPASSION. 



67 



in the conduct of many of those to whom their poor 
little lives and hearts have been committed. I have 
many times said what I here deliberately repeat, 
that if I were dying and leaving a family of helpless 
children, I would leave it as my last request that 
they might be divided — one here, and another 
there — amongst any poor, but really godly, families 
who would receive them, rather than they should be 
got into the most highly trumpetted orphanage with 
which I am acquainted ; for I should infinitely pre- 
fer that their bodies should lack necessary food 
and attention, rather than that their poor little 
hearts and souls should be crushed and famished 
for want of love, both human and Divine. Children 
brought up without love are like plants brought up 
without the sun. I would suggest to some of you 
ladies who may be on committees, or who might 
possibly get on to them, that you would be doing 
God and humanity good service by visiting these 
institutions, not on specified days, but at unthought- 
of hours or seasons ; for instance, get up a little 
earlier and go and insist on joining the children at 
their breakfast table. On other occasions, demand 
admission to the schoolroom, and observe the 
countenance and manner of those paid to instruct 
these children ; in short, observe the deportment of 
paid servants of the institution all the way through. 
A still better way, by-the-by, of following your 
Saviour and serving your generation, would be to 
take some such children yourselves and bring them 
up with all the love and care with which you bring 



68 



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up your own, or would have done so had God 
granted you the privilege. It will be a happy day 
for England when Christian ladies transfer their 
sympathies from poodles and terriers to destitute 
and starving children! 

Sixth. Another scheme, perhaps the lowest of 
these material systems of salvation, is the feeding 
system. 

I mean that system in which large sums of money 
are spent merely upon providing some special feast 
for those who are well known to be, as a rule, almost 
without food. Now, I think you will all believe me 
when I say that I rejoice in every bite or sup pro- 
vided for the needy, but I cannot help seeing how 
monstrously all this exhibits the recklessness of the 
Christian world as to the greater needs of the perish- 
ing. Some of the most intelligent and highlv 
placed people in the country may be seen looking 
complacently on upon the ragged, hungry crowd, 
who are eagerly devouring the only good meal per- 
haps which they have had for a twelvemonth, or 
which is likely to be within their reach for as long 
again, looking on without apparently having their 
sense of satisfaction in the slightest degree ruffled 
by the thought (if such people ever do think) about 
the lives which these "poor creatures" live during 
the other 364 days of the year ! Such observers do 
not seem to look behind the staring eyes and hollow 
cheeks and savage ferocity of the eaters. The 
starving hunger, the devilish dispositions and abject 
despair of the " man inside " does not seem to trouble 
them. 



ITS SHAM COMPASSION. 



69 



Now, what I want to impress upon you is, not that 
these bodily wants are unworthy of the attention 
bestowed upon them, — for I regard it as a crying 
shame that such wants should not have a thousand 
times more attention, and in a thousand times more 
comprehensive fashion than they at present receive, 
but what I complain of is, the attempt to substitute 
any or all of these for a thorough work in the heart ; 
and when such " charity " is carried out on the long 
pole system, and yet paraded in the name of Christ, 
I regard it as rather an insult than a credit to His 
name. It seems to me that the Popular Christianity 
which would put these things in the place of the 
Gospel is only another of the clever shams of the 
devil by which to ruin our race, and to turn aside 
God's people to broken cisterns, only insuring a 
more eternal weight of misery at the cost of a little 
present relief. 

Oh, friends, you who have health, talent, and 
means, make up your minds on which side you will 
act. Remember that in the light of that judgment 
which is coming on, it will appear worse than use- 
less to have expended your energies and powers on 
doing that kind of good which will NOT last, which 
will, in fact, by itself, serve the enemies' purpose 
rather than otherwise. Either do as Christ com- 
mands you, or cease to call your work by His name. 
Do not let any one delude you with the idea that 
you are following Christ, or doing that work which 
is peculiarly His, in contradistinction to all merely 
human benevolence and earthly salvation, unless 



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you are seeking first His kingdom, both within your 
own soul and every one else's. 

THE SECOXD SCHEME. 

The second of these schemes of salvation without 
a Saviour is even worse than that which I have al- 
ready described ; for while that tended to turn the 
thoughts of men from the world to come to some 
good or advantage of a temporal kind, this would 
lay a degrading hand upon eternity itself, and, under 
pretence of elevating humanity, would push it into 
a future life with its deepest intuitions all scorched 
up, and its highest aspirations disappointed and 
blighted. 

Here, again, are to be found various sects, etc. 

First comes universalism. This theory would 
make men into mere puppets, who for the time being 
are allowed to be the prey of an evil power, but 
after a certain amount of suffering are to be picked 
up by a better power. Like some unhappy country 
whose patriotic force has been crushed out of it un- 
til it has become the helpless prize, first of one 
monarch and then of another, so the kingdom of the 
human soul is to pass from evil to good and from 
Satan to God. 

The blackest wretch on earth, who has made his 
home a hell, and spread moral ruin as widely as he 
could reach, is, according to this theory, to be saved 
even as the purest saint ; for " all men " are to be 
saved — by repentance and a holy life, if they 
choose; if not, still they are to be saved — by their 



ITS SHAM COMPASSION. 



71 



own free will, if they have fixed their affections on 
things above ; but if, on the other hand, they have 
loved sin and vice, and committed all the catalogue 
of crimes, still salvation is to come out of devilry, 
and a clean thing out of an unclean! To try to 
make men believe in such a system seems to me to 
be no less insulting to their understandings than it 
is shocking to their consciences, and defiant of the 
plainest teachings of Scripture common sense and 
analogy. 

The extent of our present knowledge with respect 
to a better world is that it is the abode of those 
"who have overcome" evil. Its songs are of vic- 
tory ! Its inhabitants renounced the mark of the 
beast on earth, washed their robes and made them 
white in the blood of the Lamb, kept the command- 
ments of God, and through much tribulation were 
faithful unto death. To this assemblage of crowned 
victors, the universalist would introduce the man 
who, while on earth, overcame not evil but good, 
who was victorious, not over his own passions, the 
temptations of the devil, and the forces of evil 
around him, but over the dictates of his own con- 
science, the influences and agencies which God put 
in operation in order to save him, and over all the 
forces of righteousness with which he came in con- 
tact. Strange mercy ! to send a man like this to a 
heaven where every song would remind him of de- 
feat and degradation, and every crown and psalm 
make conspicuous his false and ignominious position. 
Strange justice also which gives the prize to him 



72 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



who never won it, nay, who despised the conditions 
of the contest, and refused to enter the lists ! 

Second in this scheme comes what I shall desig- 
nate as the all love theory. 

The propounders of this theory, without daring 
actually to contest the great facts of revelation, 
would have us be silent about the most serious of 
them, lest we should shock the people. They tell 
us gravely that men will be "repelled from the 
Gospel," if its truth about judgment and hell are 
not kept in the background ; tell, say they, about 
the Father's love, but do not talk about " damna- 
tion " and " the wrath to come." Strange mercy 
this, to let men perish rather than tell them that sin 
breeds a hell from which none can deliver them. 
What should we think of a father too merciful to 
tell us the truth ? Should we not say he was cruel ? 
The child playing on the hearth-rug might well 
complain if you will not tell him that fire burns, 
because, forsooth, he might think you cruel to have 
it there, and so you leave him to find it out by falling 
in ! " Hush, do not frighten the people ; " sing to 
them, talk sweetly to them ; there are no modern 
words for hell and such-like horrors. In ancient 
days there were prophets, whose fiery warnings of 
judgment to come led whole nations to repentance, 
but men think they know better now. The God 
who sent those poor old fanatics to speak plain 
words of wrath and denunciation is not their God. 
His words of burning reproof and fearful threaten- 
ing is not their burden. Their message is some 



ITS SHAM COMPASSION. 



73 



" sweet text " tied to a 'bunch of flowers ; their bur- 
den can be given by " Saturday evenings for the 
people," where " comic readings," " gymnastics," 
" secular music by the choir " are the converting 
measures deemed most suitable. Alas ! alas ! such 
maudlin souls are not worthy to deal with the 
things of eternity ! Who wants in the hospital a 
man too "tender" to probe the wound, too "mer- 
ciful " to amputate the mortifying limb, too 
"loving " to say with firmness, Do this, bear this, 
or die? Away with such a sentimental surgeon, 
you would cry ; send him to pick rose leaves, where 
his feeble hands will do no mischief. And yet 
these over-merciful friends I am talking about 
would spiritually elevate the masses by twaddling to 
them in their sins and rebellion, about love, and 
sweetness, and peace, when, if they did not shut 
their ears, and were willing to catch the sound, they 
would hear the thundering echoes from every 
sinner's conscience, " There is no peace to the 
wicked ; " " Wrath to come, wrath to come ! " 

Third. Next in this catalogue of modern salva- 
tions comes the theory of doubt. 

These doubters, while manifestly very shaky as 
to their own theory, argue that all is " too uncertain 
for us to speak positively as to eternity." As we 
have before noted, their scheme for elevating men is 
to teach kn o w-no thingness . They seem to think that 
doubt in itself is something very ennobling, that is, 
in things spiritual, for in things temporal they have 
faith enough, and also exact it from others. They 



74 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



claim explicit trust in their business relations, per- 
fect confidence in their domestic lives, but appear 
to think that to doubt the great Grod and His revel- 
ation will somehow prove a great blessing and 
benefit to mankind ; " as to eternal things it is not 
seemly to speak positively." 

In yonder back street, ah, even in the worst dens 
of vice, are found men who have in the depths of, 
their sinful hearts some hidden memory, which is the 
link of holy things. Perhaps they have stood when 
boys by the dying bed of some humble believing 
father, who declared in his last hours that he Jcnetv 
whom he had believed ; or perhaps, even in the 
later and blacker days of their lives, they have seen 
a little one go from their own dark homes with a 
heavenly smile upon its face, and the words, " Jesus 
has come to fetch me," on its lips ; and these men 
believe without a doubt in the God who, somehow, 
made their fathers and their children know Him, 
and some day they mean to turn to Him ; but the 
chains of an evil life are holding them down with 
the "masses" of desperate and dangerous sinners 
around them. To these the modern scheme comes 
with its new light, and lays its withering touch on 
these memories of good. " We cannot know," it 
says ; " women may have dreamt, and children be- 
lieved, old men may have had their sick fancies, but 
it is better to be without that which is delusive ; 
the only certain thing is that all is uncertain, the 
manly thing is to doubt." 

Ah! rich man, you may sit in your palace-like 



ITS SHAM COMPASSION* 



75 



home, where nothing unpleasant is now allowed to 
enter, and it may seem little loss to you, so far, that 
your belief in eternal things has been loosened; but 
to the poor man in his bare life, and to the man who 
is bound by some sinful chain of vice, and whose 
earthly career has not another gleam of hope, it be- 
comes the final stroke of misery and degradation to 
make him think that he cannot know with any cer- 
tainty any better things than those which now 
surround him. If there is not anywhere in the 
universe a Saviour's hand, whose clasp he may yet 
feel, and on whose strength he may depend to draw 
him up out of his drunken jail-bird existence to 
something purer and better, some day, when he shall 
have made up his mind to be saved, then his one 
door of hope is closed, and he realizes, with a bitter- 
ness which will drown itself in fresh outbursts of sin 
and villainy, that there is no true light or guide any- 
where for anybody. Granted that the' one guide is 
untrustworthy, the one beacon-light possibly false, 
he is out on the sea of life without a spark of hope 
or cheer. Shipwreck and eternal ruin may be the 
next event at any hour. 

Fourth. " The Christian free-thinkers " next claim 
our attention. 

These are bolder than the latter class, denying 
whatever seems to them to be objectionable in the 
Scriptures. The inspiration of the Bible is to them 
on a level with that of Shakespeare or Homer, and 
for anything they do not like they have a free ren- 
dering, or a cool excision. They would take away 



76 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



what they fancy to be stumbling-blocks in the path 
of men, without stopping to consider whether God 
Himself placed them there as guiding-posts. Ah, 
what contempt such men would feel for the word 
"free," if it were applied in other ways. Who 
would tolerate the "free" soldier, who set up his 
own notions as to military matters, and at the criti- 
cal hour of the fight was found obeying and leading 
others to obey orders which had been altered by 
the omission of all which he considered objection- 
able ! Who would for long be retained in her 
Majesty's household who should presume to alter 
the rules of court behavior, and to expunge what he 
deemed irksome ? And yet the revelation which is 
to train servants for the eternal household of the 
King of kings, and the laws laid down by the Lord 
of hosts, by which His battles are to be fought, may 
be treated with a free hand, and tinkered and 
paired — obeyed or disobeyed — according to the 
notions of men who love their own will better than 
anything else in heaven or on earth ! Alas, I fear 
it may be said of these doubters that " while they 
promise men liberty, they themselves are servants 
to corruption," and I would remind them " how that 
the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of 
Egypt, afterwards destroyed them that believed not." 

We might go on to multiply these modern schemes 
for the improvement and elevation of man, for they 
are legion, and some of them doubtless propounded 
by those who have much real concern and compas- 
sion for the multitudes, but which all the more, 



ITS SRAM COMPASSION. 



77 



because there is so much of good in them, are the 
most dangerous and ruinous to the highest interests 
of mankind. 

Take away from the way-faring man the absolute 
certainty which he feels about the truth of the 
gospel, and where do you leave him ? Wretched and 
hopeless in the very centre of his being. You may 
have fed his body, you may have clothed and housed 
him, you may have educated his children, you may 
have nursed him in sickness and comforted him in 
sorrow ; but for all this he is left on the moors to 
wander and die in desolation and darkness, in spite 
of all your feeding and all your loving rush-lights. 

This sort of compassion is the most cruel ignis 
fatuus the devil ever invented. Depend upon it, 
you cannot be more merciful than Jesus, who says 
to-day to you and to all men, " He that believeth 
shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be 
damned." 

THE DYIKG- LOVE OF CHRIST. 

We propose now to consider in juxtaposition with 
all these modern schemes for the elevation of man- 
kind, on which we have been remarking, that one 
which is universally admitted to be the model 
scheme ; the ideal of all that is lovely, tender, en- 
nobling, and comprehensive. 

The scheme of Christ, with its aims and modes, as 
shown in the story of His life-compassion for the 
world. I contend that the compassion of Jesus 
stands out distinguished as of another kind from all 



78 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



the philanthropic plans which we have been con- 
sidering. 

First: By its clear perception of the ivorst feature 
of mail's condition. 

No doubt the Saviour's heart ached in sympathy 
with the mass of human sorrow, sickness, and 
poverty brought before Him. Where we have only 
a glimpse of men's troubles as we move hurriedly 
up and down among them, He had the whole sad 
story unfolded to Him, and His keen love responded 
tenderly to every cry for help. Nevertheless, He 
was never diverted from the great central danger. 
To Him the sorrowful troubled crowd were not 
merely poor and suffering, not merely oppressed by 
unjust laws, and crowded into badly constructed 
dwellings, — not merely hungry, hard-worked, and 
comfortless ; these were incidents which He some- 
times alleviated and more often shared, but the 
crowning peril, the absolutely certain woe which 
eclipsed, in His sight, every other, was the loss of the 
soul. He flings aside contemptuously the thought 
that living well in this world was a real benefit. 
The fool of all the world, the man who in His 
opinion stood in most awful risk, is drawn by Him 
in a parable sketch which is little dwelt on in these 
days. This fool in Christ's picture was the rich 
man with bursting barns and " so much goods " 
that he knew not how to dispose of them. He was 
a man who had been elevated by education enough, 
at any rate, to enable him to do a good business ; he 
enjoyed the benefits of a good dwelling, good food, 



ITS SHAM COMPASSION. 



79 



and, doubtless, the best society within his reach; 
and yet he was a fool, and Christ holds him up as 
the last sample of such, simply because he left his 
soul in jeopardy. 

Again, Christ draws another picture, blacker and 
more awful yet, and again He selects the rich man 
(the very man, remember, who had enjoyed the best 
of this world's benefits and who also was kind to the 
poor Lazarus), and yet Christ draws aside the veil 
of the future world, and shows where earthly eleva- 
tion landed him. 

" The rich man died, and was buried. ; and in hell 
he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth 
Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And 
He cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on 
me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his 
finger in water, and cool my tongue ; for I am tor- 
mented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, 
remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy 
good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things : but 
now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And 
beside all this, between us and you there is a great 
gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from 
thence to you cannot ; neither can they pass to us, 
that would come from thence.'' 

What ! could it be Christ who talked about a man 
in fire, a man crying for a drop of water, and denied 
even this small boon ! Could it be Christ who 
talked about torment, and showed this vision of de- 
spair ; the tender, loving, merciful Christ ! Ah, He 
showed it, because He saw it ; because this was the 



80 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



real clanger, from which He had come to deliver ! 
Because He knew that the sick beggar, covered with 
undressed wounds, and with scarce an alleviating 
circumstance to assuage his sufferings, might have 
the eternal compensation which should make his. 
earthly troubles seem like a dream, if only his soul 
were right, if only he were "rich, towards God.'* 
Christ showed this, because it was the one thing 
which no one else saw. The human needs of men 
were apparent enough to many benevolent people in 
His day, including the rich giver who was going to 
hell, but the crying soul needs, which had brought 
him out of heaven, the hopeless woe to which even 
the rich and happy were drifting — the undying 
worm, the quenchless fire, were the visions of sor- 
row which He only saw, and which His tenderest 
compassion betrayed itself in seeking to relieve. 
" For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the 
whole world and lose His own soul ? Or what shall a 
man give in exchange for his soul ? " may be taken as 
indicating the foundation principle of His entire 
scheme of redemption. 

Second : Christ's compassion is distinguished from 
all other compassions by its plain, catting, personal 
dealing. 

" He would eat with sinners," talk familiarly and 
tenderly with the worst on the earth, and lay His 
hands upon the most loathsome, but He was incap- 
able of dealing lightly with their sin. 

Imagine Christ giving an entertainment, and 
spending the evening in frivolous talk, in order that 



ITS SHAM COMPASSION. 



81 



He might humor sinners and attract them to Him- 
self ! Imagine Him allowing His little band of dis- 
ciples to sing current songs and read 44 amusing 
selections" for a couple of hours at a time to keep 
people out of worse company ! No, He was too ten- 
derly compassionate for souls, who He knew might 
end their time on earth at any moment, thus to fool 
away His chance. He never lost an opportunity of 
talking straight to them about their sins, the inter- 
ests of their souls, and the claims of His Fathet's 
law. The young ruler comes to Him, and he is so 
lovable, so moral, so good, might he not have been 
allowed to join the little band of disciples, and to 
have gained light gradually? "Yet lackest thou 
one thing " was pronounced all the more clearly be- 
cause "He loved him." "Sell that thou hast, and 
follow Me "rang out all the more distinctly because 
He could offer treasures for the soul. 

The compassion of Jesus was not of the maudlin 
kind which leaves men their 44 little indulgences," 
and shrinks from being 44 too hard " on them, where 
hardness is the indispensable condition of salvation. 
44 If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off; if thy 
right eye offend thee, pluck it out," He mercilessly 
prescribes; better, He decides, be maimed and suf- 
fering here, than be cast into 44 eternal fire." 

As to the religious ideas of His day, He walked 
straight across them with a cutting 44 Woe unto 
you ! " Woe ! woe ! was the one cry with which He 
met the teachers and professors of His time, provok- 
ing their bitterest hate and animosity,, 44 Making 



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POPULAR CHRISTIANITY, 



clean the outside platter, while within are dead 
men's bones," was His short description of them 
and their doings. He upset the nice little fashions 
which had sprung up around the temple worship 
with a whip of cords. " Publicans and harlots shall 
enter the kingdom before 3 r ou," He told the grand 
professors who listened to Him. He inflicted the 
faithful wounds of a friend, in order that He might 
awaken them to their danger and lead them to seek 
the only remedy. 

Third : Christ's compassion was in direct contrast 
with all mere human benevolence in its "other 
worldliness" 

No one will dispute that He possessed the power 
to elevate the masses in a temporal sense, by bestow- 
ing on them all those benefits at which modern 
philanthropy aims. He could have fed them by a 
miracle every day, as easily as on the two occasions 
when He multiplied the bread ; and who could have 
lectured on science, or history, or invention, so 
clearly, so perfectly, as He to whom all knowledge 
must be as an open book ? He could have brought 
into His services those twelve legions of angels, and 
taken an earthly kingdom, from which He could 
have dispensed wealth and prosperity to all around ; 
but He indicated His scheme for elevating and sav- 
ing people when He said " I am the way" — to 
another sphere, another realm, not of earthly good, 
but of heavenly. When He was asked for the posts of 
honor in His kingdom, He made it clear that he was 
leading to another and higher world through a 



ITS SHAM' COMPASSION. 



83 



"baptism" and with a "cup" of suffering and 
poverty in this. 

Fourth: Christ's compassion stands out in its 
spiritual fellowship. 

The King of kings makes eternal friends of the 
fishermen. " He did not visit the poor,*' "He did 
not elevate their sad lot," and walk on in His own 
high path, having His fellowship, His joys, His 
sorrows apart from them ; but He shared His life 
with them in a holy comradeship. He did not live 
in the style and companionship of the worldly 
Pharisee, and occasionally visit Peter, James, and 
John, and hold meetings for the working classes ; 
no, He lived with them and became education, ele- 
vation, salvation, and all to them by His blessed 
fellowship. "Ye are my friends,*' said He, and "all 
things that I have heard of My Father, I have made 
known unto you." His heart had no reserves from 
these men. John's head could lean on His breast, 
and Mary could sit at His feet, with the conscious- 
ness that they were taken into His confidence, and 
were indeed as brethren. 

That they could not always understand Him was 
their fault, not His ; but their slowness and dullness 
never wearied His compassion, nor caused Him to 
seek friends elsewhere. He called His three fisher- 
men to Him when He was about to put forth any 
wonderful exercise of power. He wanted Peter, 
James, and John, when He was raising the dead, 
and took them to share His joy on the mount of 
transfiguration. He craved for their presence in 



84 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



His last agony, and desired no better provision for 
His mother, when He hung upon the cross, than 
the home that one of them could afford. 

Fifth: The compassion of Jesus is yet further 
distinguished by its Divine faith, and hope, and action. 

He had faith in the possibilities of these people, 
which possibilities would not have been very appar- 
ent to any other eye. He believed in the transform- 
ing power of the Spirit which He could send them. 
His hope was not chilled by stupidity, or foolishness, 
or non-comprehension on the part of disciples or 
outsiders. Mighty compassion must that have been 
that could live thirty years on such terms with such 
men, and never falter or turn back. Many a fine 
scheme of modern benevolence dies and goes out 
when the people who are to be -benefited get to be 
known! " Such wretches," "so ungrateful," "so 
presuming," "so hopeless." But Christ hoped all 
things, believed all things, until the Peter who was 
afraid of a servant girl stood triumphant before the 
three thousand converts. Christ kept His little 
band together, although He knew there was a traitor 
amongst them, — the traitor who would betray Him, 
and sell Him for money into the hands of His 
enemies. Christ forbore and worked with John un- 
til the man who wanted fire from heaven to burn up 
sinners became the apostle of love. Christ made 
the Samaritan harlot woman into His ambassador 
on the spot ; Christ made sound men of the lepers, 
and sane divines of the mad. He called the devils 
out of those whom they tormented, and then let 



ITS SHAM COMPASSION 



85 



loose the whole strange flock of ex-harlots, maniacs, 
and lepers, to tell His praises and to gather others 
to His presence. Christ went up to Calvary undis- 
mayed by His perfect knowledge of sinful, perverse, 
opposing men, to die for the whole ungrateful race. 
Christ hoped and believed in His own blackest hour 
for the dying blackguard at His side, and saved him 
as he hung there. Talk about " eternal hope ! " Is 
not this the eternal hope which saves to the utter- 
most now and here ? 

Sixth: The compassion of Jesus is further dis- 
tinguished by His ever going straight to the one end. 

The whole work of Christ was aimed at the sal- 
vation of men's souls. And this is not the less true 
because He also benefited their bodies by healing 
their diseases and sympathizing with their sorrows. 

This latter side of His work is much dwelt upon 
in these days, and yet it was a merely incidental 
part. If He had come to remove earthly suffering, 
poverty, oppression, and distress, He would, as I 
have pointed out, certainly have gone about it in a 
different way. He would have aimed at riches and 
position and ease, in order that He might have 
shared them with His own chosen ones. He would 
have sought to build up an earthly kingdom, where 
men should neither hunger nor thirst, nor be sick, 
nor die ; and it would have been a far easier task 
than the founding of that new invisible kingdom 
which we have already tried to describe, where only 
the spiritual and eternal should be of much import- 
ance. In comparison, how much easier to have 



86 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



drawn crowds if He had always given them their 
dinner, than to hold followers who should enter 
into the mysterious doctrine, "I am the Bread of 
life ; " " Ye must be born again ! " 

But He did feed the multitudes, and He did heal 
the sick ! Yes, but He gave up the former when 
He found that they followed Him for that only, and 
His acts of healing were flashes of the Divine power 
within Him, rather than the " work given Him to 
do." " I came to call sinners to repentance," " I am 
come to set the daughter-in-law against her mother- 
in-law, and a man's foes shall be they of his own 
household." "I came to bring fire on earth." "I 
came not to send peace, but a sword." These say- 
ings, and multitudes of others, were descriptive of a 
spiritual mission, and yet He was most tender, as 
we readily trace, to every suffering, needy creature 
who came in contact with Him. His pity was 
boundless for the lame, the blind, and the deaf, and 
His loving heart must have grieved over much in 
the sea of human misery brought before Him, of 
which we never hear. The truest love must ever 
seek the highest good of its object, sometimes even 
with forgetfulness of important lesser advantages. 
He gave the great rule by which His compassion for 
men's necessities was guided, when He said, " Seek 
first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness ; 
and all other things shall be added unto you." 

Seventh : The compassion of Jesus stands out in 
contrast with all other in its devotion unto death. 

He was too merciful to men to spare them the 



ITS SHAM COMPASSION. 



87 



bitter truths of hell, or to conceal from them the pun- 
ishments due to transgression ; but on Himself He 
had no compassion. 

If the penalty were indeed so awful, He would 
share it. He too would bear the curse, the shame, 
the agony of dying for sin, so far as could for the 
sinless One be possible. 

How brightly this compassion shines out against 
that of many who profess so much for the suffering 
and the lost. Watch the people who talk the most 
loudly of their tenderness, and will not say one 
word of the "outer darkness" and the hell fire of 
which He said so much. Where is there any dying 
love amongst them? Where are their Calyarys? 
Are they remarkable for cross-bearing ? Are they 
noted for self-denial, or is it in word only, and not 
in deed, that they are more compassionate than 
Jesus ? They do not like to repeat to the poor His 
terrible words of warning. May it not be because 
they are unwilling to act toward the poor as He did ? 

No rough living, no fishermen friends, no hungry, 
weary days, no homeless nights, no persecution and 
contempt — above all, no scourge, no crown of 
thorns, no march up to Golgotha, no nailing to the 
cross, no agony, no dying for the salvation of men ! 
There can be no other dying love than that which 
causes the real dying. Do settle that in your minds, 
for without a dying, a real, complete, and eternal 
separation between your old self and the new self, 
which means to live and die for others, you cannot 
be a true disciple of Jesus Christ, or an eternal 



88 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



benefactor to your race. You may not come to any 
suclx terrible end as your Master did, for as a rule 
in outward things the servant is above his Lord, 
but in some way or another you are doubtless called 
to follow Him in a path full of suffering and self- 
denial, in a road of shame in which you will find 
yourself completely cut off, alas, from the rest of 
mankind ; but without this daily dying, this true fol- 
lowing of Him, do not expect to be able to do any 
lasting good to those who are perishing around you. 

Let no benevolent projects, no magnificent phrases 
deceive you. The good done to mankind by the 
poor fishermen who spoke the truth, the whole 
truth, and nothing but the truth, has surpassed all 
the achievements of modern philanthropy as far as 
the noon-day sun surpasses the rushlight. 

If you want to elevate the masses, go and ask Him 
how to do it, and if the answer comes, " Take up 
thy cross and follow Me," obey. 



LECTURE IV. 



Popular Christiaotty : Its Cowardly Service 
v. the Real Warfare. 



The subject for this afternoon is The Cowardly 
Service of Popular Christianity in contrast with the 
Real Warfare which Christ demands of His People. 

I should like to say before I commence, that I 
hope, nay, I believe, that many of my audience will 
give me credit for speaking the truth in love ; that 
although some things I may have to say may sound 
cutting, and will be cutting, as all truth when it 
comes in contact with error must be — it would 
cease to be truth if it were not — yet that I do not 
speak these things censoriously. If I know any- 
thing of my own heart and experience, I can say I 
do not speak these things harshly, but painfully and 
reluctantly. But they have been burnt into ray 
soul during twenty-one years of public work, by 
absolute personal contact with the evils of which I 
speak. I have forborne long, hoping that some one 
more able would take up this sword, until I some- 
times fear that I have been guilty of withholding 
my sword from blood— God knows not for my own 
69 



90 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY, 



sake, for since I came to the crucifixion of myself I 
have not cared much what men might say of me ; 
but I have forborne sometimes under a mistaken 
notion of dealing gently with, and of hiding, the 
sins of professed Christians for fear of hurting the 
kingdom. But some three or four years ago the 
Lord took me to task, more especially on this matter, 
and showed me that I had no more right to palliate 
a wrong state of things in His professing people 
than in open sinners — that we ought to examine 
ourselves, judge ourselves, and reprove ourselves and 
each other, so that we might redeem His name from 
the awful effects of our inconsistency, and of our 
coming so far short of the standard which Christ 
has set up for us. Therefore what I say this after- 
noon, and in my following lectures, please to bear 
in mind I only say because I MUST, and because I 
could not die in peace if I had not said it. That I 
shall be criticized and condemned I fully expect, 
and that in exact proportion to the force with which 
the truths shall be demonstrated in every man's 
conscience. But be assured that this effort has cost 
me many a tear and prayer, and much thought and 
self-abandonment. I think I can say to those per- 
sons here who may be cut the most severely, and to 
those who are not here to whom my words refer, I could 
gladly go down at their feet and wash them with 
my tears, if I could thus bring about a better state 
of things. 

I want to remark first, that Jesus Christ came to 
establish the kingdom of Grod upon the earth; that 



ITS COWARDLY SERVICE. 



91 



He intended this kingdom to be a literal kingdom, 
that is, as truly a kingdom as any of the kingdoms 
of this world; that He intended it to be a holy king- 
dom, a kingdom of righteousness, and consequently 
separate from, and above, all other kingdoms ; that 
Christ continually spoke of His followers as a com- 
munity, existing in the midst of another kingdom 
or community, having its own laws and principles 
and aims entirely distinct and separate from the 
world. He not only made it separate, but He or- 
dained that it should be kept separate, and He did 
not fail to give the most emphatic cautions and 
prohibitions against any amalgamation whatever 
between the forces of His kingdom and the forces of 
the kingdom of Satan, in the midst of which His 
kingdom was established. 

Further, He put forth the claim, as the King and 
Sovereign of this kingdom, to the highest affection, 
allegiance, and homage of the hearts of His subjects, 
representing Himself as a King in a sense entirely 
beyond and above all earthly sovereigns. He rep- 
resented Himself as reigning, not by virtue of out- 
ward power, but by virtue of the inward love, 
devotion, and adoration of His subjects ; and thus 
more perfectly and completely over their outward 
lives than any earthly king could pretend to do. 

Further, the avowed purpose of Jesus Christ was 
to propagate and extend this kingdom over the 
whole earth. 

In this respect only was He the originator of a 
new dispensation, for God had already a kingdom 



92 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



in the earth, although it was of a national and 
sectarian character. Jesus Christ came to break 
down the walls of partition between Jew and Gen- 
tile, and to let out, so to speak, the mercy, goodness, 
and grace of God to the whole race. Henceforth 
there was to be " neither Greek nor Jew, 
barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free ; but Christ is all, 
and in all.*' 

But as in Adam all had died, so in Christ should 
all be made alive ; as all men had lost their souls in 
Adam, so all should have the opportunity, subject 
to that free choice without which either salvation or 
damnation would be a mere figure of speech, and 
without which a man would be no more capable of 
salvation than an ox, — subject only to such choice 
every son and daughter of Adam should have the 
provision in Christ of eternal salvation. 

Then, further, Jesus Christ ordained and arranged 
that this kingdom of His should be propagated in 
the world by human instrumentality. Why, we do 
not know. There might be many reasons, but the 
main one probably was that the human being, him- 
self transformed, restored to God and to His image, 
and inspired with His love, would be the most 
effectual ambassador that God could send. 

Another reason might be that Christ chose to put 
this honor on His own brethren after the Spirit — 
those whom He had redeemed from amongst men, 
and who have chosen Him as their Sovereign, with 
His cross and its consequences, in preference to the 
pleasures, riches, or honors of this world. 



ITS COWARDLY SERVICE. 



93 



Or, third, it might be that no other instrumental- 
ity would be so calculated to bring glory to His 
Father, the weakness of the human agent exhibiting 
most perfectly the excellency of the Divine power. 

Note further, that the establishment of this king- 
dom over all the earth means, of course, resistance 
and opposition from those nations already in pos- 
session. 

And here is a wonderful analogy between the 
establishment of the kingdom of Christ and the 
subjugation of Canaan to the Israelites. God had 
promised that land to Abraham long years before, 
and spoke of it as already belonging to his descend- 
ants; nevertheless they had to go and conquer it 
in His strength. So God has given the kingdoms 
of this earth to His Son. In the end the kingdoms 
of this world are to become the kingdoms of our 
God and of His Christ ; but we have to go and 
conquer them, just as the Israelites had to conquer 
Canaan, in the faith, and by the strength, of our 
God. It has only been for want of faith that the 
world has not been conquered long ago. Oh, what 
a delusion many Christians labor under with respect 
to the extension of the kingdom of God ! They 
have a notion that the kingdom is to take the 
world by stealth ; that men are to be turned to God 
without any connection of means with the event ; 
that it is going to be done with a sort of internal 
miracle, and the church has been waiting for this 
miracle for 1800 years. Consequently the work is 
not done> because this notion is in direct opposition 



94 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



to the orders and ordination of the King. If ever 
the world is subdued, it will be by His servants 
carrying out their Lord's instructions, and setting 
themselves to subdue it. It will be by bringing all 
the wisdom, skill, and force of their humanity, allied 
with divinity, as the early disciples did, and turning 
that force upon the rebel world. It will be done by 
hard, desperate fighting, if the great fundamental 
principles laid down in this Bible are to be relied 
on, and in no other way, because the nations in pos- 
session will never let you subdue them and take 
them for God without opposition. Christ systemat- 
ically foretold and depicted this opposition, and 
gave His disciples to understand that they would 
have to wage war with all the power of those who 
were possessed of evil, and who were profiting by 
evil, and that it would be no easy conquest. 

He told them they would have to go and subdue 
this evil by good, this unrighteousness by righteous- 
ness. The spirit of the devil would have to be 
driven out of man by the power of the Spirit of 
God dwelling in them. This He taught as plainly 
and persistently as He taught anything. If we 
wanted an illustration of the continuance of this 
spirit of opposition in the earth, we might find it in 
the events that have lately transpired in Switzer- 
land. A little force of godly people, without any 
of the peculiarities about which there has been such 
a hue and cry in England, without an instrument of 
music, without a banner or flag, or procession, or 
open-air service, without even a uniform, had only 



ITS COWARDLY SERVICE. 



95 



to commence to live Jesus Christ over again, and 
to carry out His orders in thrusting His claims on 
their fellow-men, when wicked rulers combined 
with those who profit by the vilest kinds of vice to 
mob them, drive them out, put them down, or kill 
them, as the case might be. Why? Because the 
instinct of the evil one recognized the Spirit of 
Jesus Christ. The devil always knows where the 
Spirit of Jesus Christ is, and he knows something 
else ; he knows where it is not, and where it is not 
he lets well alone ! 

" Oh ! " people say, "the world is different in these 
days from what it was in the days of Jesus Christ 
and Paul." Is it? Try it on the same lines, and 
you will soon find- out how far different it is. The 
very essence of the spirit of evil is antagonistic to 
the spirit of good. Good and evil are as diametri- 
cally opposed to each other as ever ; therefore they 
can never be brought into contact without conflict, 
without war, and sometimes of the most deadly 
kind, ending in the death and martyrdom of the 
saints. I was amused with the exemplification of 
this some weeks ago. As one of our female officers 
was walking up Clapton, a band of lads were hooting 
after her, " Hallelujah ! " " Jesus Christ ! " " Sal- 
vation ! " and other beautiful names ; for in whatever 
voice they be hissed out, they cannot make such 
words ugly. They were hissing these names after 
her as she walked meekly and quietly along. At 
length she turned suddenly to them and said, 
" What are you doing this for ? I have never done 



96 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



you any harm. I am walking peaceably along the 
road; why are you shouting after me?" They 
were all so taken aback that they stood breathless 
for a moment, then one of them, I suppose a little 
bolder than the rest, and at least an honest lad, said, 
'•It is because you are good and we are bad/' Ah! 
that was the truth for once. That was the expres- 
sion, in his rough way, of the eternal principle, that 
there must be conflict between good and evil ; and 
the greater good you bring in conflict with evil, thd 
more the evil will rage and try for the mastery. Hence, 
the world treated Him who was the very personifi- 
cation of the Father's holiness, worse than it ever 
treated any other human beino\ because He was the 
concentration of goodness, and therefore the devil 
did His worst on Him ; and just as we approximate 
to His character will the devil do his worst on us. 

Further, Christ taught His soldiers to expect the 
opposition of devils. 

I suppose most" of you believe in evil spirits who 
have access to the human mind. I wish, if you do 
not, you could have some of the experience of the 
Salvation Army; I think you would then. If there 
are evil spirits, if they have access to this world, 
and if they are interested in circumventing the plans 
of God, it only stands to sense that they should in- 
fluence their servants to fight in opposition to the 
servants of God. This opposition was foretold by 
Christ, and His servants were warned against it, 
and provided for it. He said to His apostles when 
he commissioned them, " Behold, I send you forth 



ITS COWARDLY SERVICE. 



97 



as sheep among wolves, but lo, I am with you 
always." And again to Paul, "I will be with thee, 
delivering thee from the people, and from the 
Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee." Why? 
Because He knew the opposition which their mission 
would provoke. He said, " Think not that I am 
come to send peace on earth : I came not to send 
peace, but a sword.*' Wherever the true Christ 
appears, there must the sword come to the dividing 
asunder of everything evil, and there must also 
come the sword of provocation. Even the nearest 
and dearest relatives rise up to persecute those who 
truly follow the Christ. This must continue to be 
so while good and evil continue in contact, and the 
fact that modem. Christianity has ceased, as a rule, 
to provoke opposition, is one of the deadliest signs 
of its effeteness. As a rule, the world and modern 
Christianity go comfortably on together. They are 

i/O JO J 

so actuated by one common principle, and walk so 
amicably on one common pathway, that you see 
very little collision between them. The world has 
very little to complain of, and so it lets them alone. 
May God help, and quickly mend or end it. 

Further, I want you to note, that, noth withstand- 
ing all the danger involved in this deadly warfare, 
which Jesus Christ represented it to be, — for He 
did not deceive them, but told them plainly that all 
men would hate them, that they would probably 
have to follow Him to martyrdom and death, — 
nevertheless, they accepted the mission. I grant 
that they were a little time in coming to comprehend 



98 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



it ; I grant that it took some time to free them from 
their national and sectarian prejudices. Peter had to 
receive his lesson through the vision of the sheet let 
down from heaven, before he understood the true 
genius of his mission. But when he and the other 
apostles did comprehend it, — and that was the 
difference between them and modern apostles, — 
when they saw the work to which the Master called 
them, they joyfully embraced it. They did not stop 
to confer with flesh and blood, or to reason what it 
would cost them, to ask about salaries, or houses, 
or friends; they embraced the mission and went, and 
carried it out with their lives in their hands; and 
oh, how magnificently they succeeded ! What a 
large portion of the world they subdued in compari- 
son with their numbers and facilities, for, remember, 
there were no railways in those days to speed them 
from town to town, and city to city ; there were no 
telegraphs to fly before them with their announce- 
ments; no printing presses to herald their coming 
with posters and handbills and all manner of notices ; 
they had none of the facilities which we possess in 
these days for quickening the speed, or how gladly 
would they have availed themselves of them ! What 
gigantic success they attained, because they carried 
out their mission on the lines which Jesus Christ 
had laid down. Is it not true that just in proportion 
as their successors have followed in their steps, they 
have been successful in propagating the gospel? 
We all know that the stars in the heavenly firma- 
ment, the men and women who stand out with extra 



ITS COWARDLY SERVICE. 



99 



brilliancy on the page of history, as having been 
successful in pushing this glorious warfare, have 
been the men and women who took their lives in 
their hands, and followed their Master without 
respect to consequences; who came out straight and 
clear from the world and set themselves to their 
work, irrespective of what men might say or do to 
them. And we know what mighty conquests some 
of them achieved, and therefore we may reason that 
if all Christ's professed disciples had followed in 
the same track, a million times greater results would 
have been attained. 

Let me put a practical question here. How many 
are there here who have comprehended the task? 
How many are there to whom the Spirit of God has 
said in unmistakable language, " Come out from 
amongst the ungodly or the half-hearted, and be 
separate, and I will touch j'our lips with a live coal 
from off My altar, and will make you fishers of 
men?" Did you embrace the mission? Have you 
gone forth following your Master, carrying His cross 
and seeking the souls of men? If not, what will 
you say to Him in the great day of account ? 

Further, in looking at the requirements of the 
King, and at the history of the early apostles and 
disciples, I charge it on modern Christianity, that 
its professors do not even comprehend the first prin- 
ciples of this warfare^ much less do they set them- 
selves to carry it on to the ends of the earth. 

The service rendered to the King and to the 
kingdom in these days is, alas, with few exceptions, 



100 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



of a very milk-arid-watery type, of a very sliort- 
weiglit character, and the great effort of the 
majority of its teachers, judging from their writings, 
and from what we see and know of their public 
services and of their private lives, seems to be 
intended to make things comfortable all round. 
"Peace, peace," is the continual cry, when there is 
no peace. As one of the bishops said a little while 
ago, " We hear a great deal about Church defence ; 
we ought to be hearing about Church aggression." 
Yes, alas ! in the great mass of instances when these 
modern Christians do fight, it is over opinions and 
ceremonies with their own children, inside their own 
walls, instead of with the enemy outside. They are 
far more valiant in defending some ceremonial of 
the Church, than they are in defending the cross of 
Christ in the presence of its adversaries. They are 
far more concerned in propagating their " ism " 
than the kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in 
the Holy Ghost. Alas, that it should be so ; but 
such is the fact, and it is patent to every enlight- 
ened observer. 

Jesus Christ did not call us to fight each other, 
but He called us to present one bold front to the 
enemy. He bade us go and take captive the hearts 
and souls of men, and not merely to change their 
opinions. Get a man's heart right, and his opinions 
will soon follow. But you may be tinkering at his 
intellect till the hour of his death, and he will not 
be a whit nearer heaven, but perchance nearer hell, 
than if he had been left alone. 



ITS COWARDLY SERVICE, 



101 



Further, these modern Christians, as a rule, do 
not see any need for the fight. 

They hide themselves under some vain, false 
notions of the sovereignty of God. Oh, how often 
they have made my heart ache when I have been 
trying to arouse them to do something for the 
kingdom. They say, " God is a sovereign, and He 
will accomplish His purposes out of all this sin and 
ruin;" and so they sit comfortably down and let 
things drift; and they have drifted to some pur- 
pose, have they not? In this so-called Christian 
country, in this nineteenth century, they have 
drifted to about as near perdition as they well could, 
without absolutely bringing hell on the earth. 
They have drifted socially as well as spiritually. 
Look at the state of the nation. Look at the god- 
lessness, the injustice, the falseness, the blasphemy, 
the uncleanness and the debauchery everywhere ! 
Do you ever look at the condition of things close to 
your doors and your churches? the worse than 
heathen beastliness into which thousands of our 
neglected neighbors, rich and poor alike, have sunk? 
If only half the professing Christians of London had 
followed in their Master's steps for one twelve- 
month, such things would have been impossible, 
utterly impossible ! 

I repeat, Jesus Christ has ordained and provided 
that His people are to set themselves to stem these 
torrents of moral and social pollution ; they are to go 
and beard the lion in his den ; to face the slaves of 
sin, open their eyes, and bring them clown to His feet, 



102 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



just as much as were His early followers ; and never 
till we do it shall we realize a better state of things. 
All the legislation, education, or provision of better 
dwellings, as I shall hereafter try to demonstrate, 
won't touch the moral cancer, the spring of all this 
wickedness and misery ; nothing will do it until the 
Christians rise up to do their Master's bidding. 
But I say, they do not see any need for it, and they 
try to quiet us who do. You have to prove, and 
argue, and drive, and almost show them damnation 
before you get a bit of service of any sort out of them. 
They have no heart for the fight. They do not feel 
these things. As God said of the fallen and false 
prophets of the Jews, " They lay not these things 
to their hearts." They lay their own business to 
their hearts. You see it depicted on the coun- 
tenances of these Christian men if the balance is on 
the wrong side ; if bankruptcy stares them in the 
face, you soon find that out. These Christian 
women lay the welfare of their own families to their 
hearts ; you soon find out when a child is sick, or in 
any kind of disgrace or danger. But these same 
men and women can walk about the walls and see 
the desolations of Zion without any of these marks 
of distress or apprehension, without any such tears 
or groans. 

They will manifest more anger against the people 
who urge them to fight, than they will against the 
enemy. A great many of them hate the Salvation 
Army for this more than for any other thing. They 
say, " You are always at us ; let us alone, we want 



ITS COWARDLY SERVICE. 



103 



peace." They want to be quiet and comfortable, 
and to have their religion in a snug, back-parlor fash- 
ion. Fight ! they hate the name of fighting. 
Going out to face the mob ! oh, dear no ! that is out 
of all question. How could you ever think of such 
a thing? Being mocked, and spit upon, and kicked, 
and buff etted, and perchance killed for Christ ! they 
would think you were clean gone mad. Some of 
these modern Christians have tried to put two or 
three of our people into asylums for nothing else. 
The moment anybody attempts really to obey 
Jesus Christ, they cry, " Mad ! mad ! away with 
such a fellow; he is not fit to live." What a veri- 
table laughing-stock to hell such professed 
Christians make themselves. The devil says, " All 
right ; let them alone. Let them go to their sanc- 
tuaries, let them have their creeds and ceremonies, 
let them sing their sweet hymns, and amuse them- 
selves with their religious entertainments and their 
Bible classes ; do not disturb them, whatever you do, 
they are amongst my best and most successful 
allies." Oh, may God show us these things, and 
help us to set to work to awaken every backslidden, 
lazy professor within reach of us. 

Many of these latter day Christians are most 
zealous in building the sepulchres of the prophets, 
that is, of the saints — the spiritual warriors of by- 
gone times. They are often great at lectures on 
these ancient worthies — Luther, George Fox, Wes- 
ley, and others, — and they will listen most interest- 
edly to a dissertation on their heroism, just as they 



104 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



would listen to a lecture on Shakespeare or Milton; 
but as to imitating their deeds of valor, it never 
enters their minds any more than if they had been 
inhabitants of another sphere. They simply go, in 
the great mass of instances, to have their intellects 
amused, their feelings tickled. It never dawns on 
them that they are to go and imitate the example of 
these heroes. They do not perceive that it ought 
equally to be the absorbing interest of their own 
lives, and that they are equally called to brave men 
and devils in propagating the kingdom of Christ in 
the earth. They go home and live the coming 
week exactly as they lived the week preceding it. 
They admire the men who laid down their lives for 
the King a hundred or three hundred years ago, and 
will perhaps put up a monument to their memory, 
but as to doing so themselves, or allowing them- 
selves to come into the same circumstances of per- 
secution, they would sooner almost go to hell. I 
speak the things I know and have witnessed till my 
heart is sick. 

Further, I charge it on popular Christianity that 
its professors are ashamed of their colors in the pres- 
ence of the enemy. 

They shrink from any open, straightforward con- 
fession of Christ before men. I maintain that it is 
not confessing Him to go to church or chapel once a 
week amongst those who go the same way with you. 
They do not confess Him on the exchange, in the 
bank, or in the streets of the city. Where do you 
see any one, or only one in a million, who comes out 



ITS COWARDLY SERVICE. 



105 



with any thorough-going, straightforward confession 
of Christ before the world? Where? There are a 
few Roman Catholics or high Church monastics, and 
whatever I may think of their errors and their mum- 
meries, I always feel a measure of reverence when I 
pass them. I feel there is a man or woman who is 
willing to acknowledge his God before men, and 
who is not ashamed to come out and condemn the 
world, by being separate from it, and entering a pro- 
test against its fashions and its follies. 

How many professing Christians are there of this 
day who would go through the city of London in 
any attire, or with any kind of badge, that said to 
men and women, " I am a saint and a soldier of 
Jesus Christ ? " And yet the soldiers of the queen 
are proud to do this in an enemy's country ! I re- 
peat, who is there that dare do it for Christ, except 
us fanatics of the Salvation Army ? 

I understand that a popular minister said the other 
day, speaking of the Salvation Army, that we were 
" playing at soldiers ! " I will engage to say that if 
that minister will come with us for a single day, we 
will give him such a dose of fighting as he never had 
in his life before. We will send him home at night 
quite convinced that it is no playing at soldiers on 
our part. If he does not get his head broken, we 
will guarantee that his coat will be torn, or covered 
with mud or ochre, or something worse ! 

Playing at soldiers, indeed ! let him doff his kid 
gloves, his gentleman's attire, and lay aside his cigar^ 
and come with our lasses into the public-houses with 



106 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



the War Cry or a Bible under his arm, or anything 
else that tells the inmates what he has come for, and 
he will find out whether we are playing at soldiers 
or not ! I would like to put that man alongside one 
of our dear little female captains in a certain jail 
just now, and see whether such an experience, even 
for twenty-four hours, would not change his opinion. 
Such cruel stabs from professed Christian ministers 
are worse than the cruel mockings and scourgings 
of the enemy. " May the Lord not lay this sin to 
their charge." But to return to this shame-faced- 
ness in the Master's cause : it is time we had done 
with it ; it is time we proclaimed ourselves ; for we 
speak to numbers by our appearance to whom we 
can never speak by our words, and unless we confess 
Christ in our appearance in such instances, we can- 
not confess Him at all. Besides, why should we be 
ashamed of it? Why? The other day when I was 
driving through a low thoroughfare of London, and 
the little urchins were crying after me, one " Jesus ! " 
another, " Hallelujah I J 9 and a third, "There goes 
the Salvation Army ! " I felt my soul glow with 
holy joy as I thought of the words, " The reproaches 
of them that reproached Thee fell on me." 

I do not care what kind of a garb or a badge you 
wear, — that is not the point, but there ought to be 
a badge which says to every man and woman, "I 
belong to Jesus Christ, and I am not ashamed of my 
colors." 

Any profession of Jesus Christ which brings no 
cross is all nonsense ; it is not confession at all. 



ITS COWARDLY SERVICE. 



107 



There are plenty of Christians very brave inside 
their churches in the presence of their friends, or on 
parade. They sing : — 

" Am I a soldier of the cross ? " 

or, 

" Hold the fort, for I am coming." 

I was once in a large congregation where they 
were singing this with the greatest gusto : — 

" Wave the answer back to heaven, 
' By Thy grace we will.' " 

I was sitting beside a warrior of the cross, one 
who carried the marks of many a desperate battle on 
his worn face. I whispered, " What should you 
think this people's conception of holding the fort 
is? " and he whispered back, " A seven-and-sixpenny 
pew ! " Alas, how true, in hundreds of instances. 
Are there any ministers here ? If so, I ask you, Is 
it not true of three parts of your congregations? 
What do the people in your pews mean by holding 
the fort ? What fort do they hold ? They hold the 
fort valiantly on the stock exchange, in the bank, at 
the office, or behind the counter. Let anybody go 
and try to get the better of them there, and they 
will hold that fort valiantly enough ; but what fort 
are they holding for Jesus Christ ? Here are two 
men, one is a professing Christian, the other an 
honorable man of the world. They are both, we 
will suppose, in the same business. Take their 
lives from day to day, and what is the difference be- 
tween them? The one goes to church or chapel 
once or twice on Sunday. On the week day he gets 



108 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



up in the morning and has his breakfast, and per- 
haps he reads prayers out of a book, or perhaps not ; 
this done and away he rushes to the city, to the 
business, where he works and thinks and plans with 
untiring energy till evening to make money. This 
is what he does six days in the week, without giv- 
ing one hour per day to any kind of service to God 
or humanity, or even to the affairs of his own or his 
children's souls. The other man does just the 
same, only he does not go to church on Sunday, or 
read prayers. If you look into the lives of these 
two men at the end of the week, you can't find that 
the professed Christian has done one iota for the 
kingdom of God more than the other. You can't 
find that he has spoken to any one about his soul, 
he would think it out of season to talk about religion 
in the shop, the counting-house, or on the exchange. 
He has never buttoned-holed any of his acquaint- 
ances or friends in his own house; he has never 
knelt down by the side of any poor wandering 
brother or sister, never visited any sick one or 
prayed with the dying ; he has not done a thing 
for the Lord Jesus, and yet he will go to chapel and 
sing, " Hold the fort " on Sunday, as though he had 
been living the life of a saint all the week. I ask, 
Why should such a man be called a Christian any 
more than his neighbor over the way? Oh, friends, 
it is time we wiped away this reproach, and put it 
out of the power of infidels and atheists to wag their 
heads and say, " What do ye more than others ? " 
It is time we drummed out of the professed armies 
of our Lord all such renegades or hypocrites ! 



ITS CO WABBLY SERVICE. 



109 



Further, the great mass of these modern Christians 
cannot enter into this fight because they refuse to 

BEAR THE CONSEQUENCES. 

Fighting is hard work, whatever sort of fighting 
it is. You cannot fight without wounds of body, 
heart or soul. You cannot be a soldier without en- 
during "hardness" and genteel Christians don't like 
hardness — they won't have the consequences. 

First, they won't lose their reputation ; they won't 
be counted fools and fanatics. I was thinking the 
other day, if we could have a list of the names of 
every person, high and low, rich and poor, who has 
ever been to the meetings of the Salvation Army, 
and who has received light and truth, and been 
called and claimed by God for this war, but who 
has gone back into the wilderness, what a list that 
would be ! And more than half of this drawing 
back has been because people have been ashamed 
to own where they got their blessing, or where they 
might have had it. Friends, the recording angel 
keeps such a list ! A gentleman answered the other 
day, when bewailing his miserable spiritual condi- 
tion, and one of our friends asked him to go to a 
holiness-meeting, " not in ray own town" If he had 
been in London, and could have crept in with the 
crowd into the great Congress Hall, where nobody 
would have recognized him, he would have gone, 
but not in his own town. That reveals the secret of 
thousands of people having resisted the light, and 
lost the blessing they might have had. It was the 
same spirit of false shame which prompted the 



110 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



question of the Pharisees, " Have any of the rulers 
or of the Pharisees believed on Him ? " 

My brother, my sister, listen : — while you. care 
what any man or woman on earth thinks about you, 
or the instruments used of God to bless you, never 
expect to keep your blessing, for you never w T ill. 
That man will go blundering on in his present lean 
and skeleton condition to the grave, and probably 
into hell, unless he repents, and finds out his mis- 
take, and does his first works. Ashamed ! Won't 
be thought fanatical or weak, won't be mixed up 
with these common people. " Not in my own town, 
not in my own family, " — too proud to confess that 
I am not just what I should be, and that I am going 
amongst those poor people to be made better. Oh, 
dear no, not if heaven depended upon it. Listen ! 
" Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of Me and 
of my words, of him also shall the Son of Man be 
ashamed, when He cometh in the glory of His Fa- 
ther with the holy angels. " 

Then, further, these modern Christians refuse to 
give their substance to carry on the war. 

You see war is impossible without money. I 
wish it were not so, but I cannot help it. This war 
is as impossible as any other, without money. Men 
and women must eat to live, however little they 
may manage with. And travelling expenses, rent 
of buildings, announcements, working expenses, 
prosecutions, breakdowns through sickness, etc., 
etc., must be met. This war, I say, must have mon- 
ey, AND THE MORE WAR THE MORE MONEY IS WANT- 



ITS COWARDLY SERVICE, 



111 



ED. How many of these mongrel Christians, when 
faced with the needs of the war chest, exclaim, " Mon- 
ey again ! always begging." Now contrast the feel- 
ings of these same people when there is any great 
popular national war on foot. Then, what do they 
say in their newspapers, in their public meeting? 
They say to their statesmen : "You must ask for 
grants ; you must not stick fast for money. We 
must win. John Bull must not be beaten for the 
sake of a few millions ! " Ah, ah ! their hearts are in 
this warfare ! The women would sell their orna- 
ments, and the men would hand over their balances, 
rather than England's freedom or greatness should 
be sacrificed. Now then, I say that if the Chris- 
tians of this London and this England of ours had 
the true war spirit, the spirit which says, " I want 
the world for Christ Jesus: I want my King to 
reign over the hearts of men : He shall win, be it 
at the cost of money or blood, or all else," — if this 
spirit possessed them, instead of begrudging and 
reckoning how little they could give, and how much 
would save appearances, they would try how far 
they could deny themselves, and how much they 
could give. Oh! is this not true? Can you contra- 
dict it ? Then, what am I to think of a band of pro- 
fessed soldiers who are always grumbling about hav- 
ing to give their money to extend the reign of their 
king, whom they profess to love more than all else 
besides ! I do not propose to dwell on the beggarly 
subterfuges for getting money which these Christ- 
ians resort to ; it would make my cheeks crimson 



112 POPULAR CHBISTIAXITY. 

with shame. I said to a lady a little while ago, who 

was working an elaborate piece of embroidery for a 
bazaar, " Why don't yon give the money, and use 
your time for something better ? *' She answered, 
" This will sell for more than it costs." " Then reek- 
on what it will sell for. and give the money: don't 
sit at home making other people's finery, instead of 
visiting the sick and seeking to save the lost!" It 
makes me burn with shame to think how money is 
raised for so-called religions purposes by semi-world- 
ly concerts, entertainments, penny readings, and 
bazaars, at which there is frequently positive gamb- 
ling to raise money for Jesus Christ, whom they say 
they love more than fathers, mothers, husbands, 
wives, houses or lands, or anything else on earth ! 
And these are the people who accuse the Salvation Ar- 
my of want of reverence ! I have sometimes talked 
to ladies when they have been expensively dressed, 
and they have said, " Really, I do not care for these 
tilings." " Then, " I have said, " it is passing strange 
you should be willing to spend your money for them. 
People generally care for the things they pay 
for.'' If Christians really cared for the reign of 
Jesus Christ over the hearts of men. if their hearts 
were set on His Kingdom and on doing all they possi- 
bly could to extend it. if it were the highest ambition 
of their souls, the waking and sleeping idea of 
their minds, do you think they would grudge to pay 
for it? Oh no ; any child knows they would not. 
Such professed concern is a mockery ! 

Further, these modern Christians refuse to give 



ITS COWARDLY SERVICE. 



113 



themselves or their children to the propagation of the 
kingdom. 

They studiously bring up their children from three 
or four years of age to eighteen or twenty, grinding 
it into them every day of their lives, for six and 
eight hours a day, how to get on and up in this 
world; but when Jesus Christ wants one of them — 
especially if he or she happens to be clever — to do 
any unpopular, or, in the eyes of the world, vulgar 
work for Him — any work that will bring a cross — 
they consider it absolutely throwing that child away. 
All the ordinary, silly, sickly circles of gossip, and 
croquet, and drawing-room occupations, are consid- 
ered most respectable and satisfactory in the case of 
young girls, alongside of any one of them giving her- 
self up to seek and to save the lost. I heard a young 
lady say of a large circle of Christian friends: 
" While I was in frivolity and sin they all let me 
alone ; I never had a letter, that I remember, from 
any of them about my soul ; but as soon as they 
found that I had given myself to work amongst the 
poor and the lost 5 then they all woke up to a deep 
concern about my future, and I was flooded with 
letters from these Christian friends ! " Oh ! what do 
you think Jesus Christ would say to such people ? 
Would He not say, as He said of their representa- 
tives, the Pharisees, " Well hath Esaias prophesied 
of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people hon- 
oreth Me with their lips, but their heart is far from 
Me " ? Why should that daughter be thought thrown 
away who comes out and chooses a voluntary pov- 



114 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY: 



erty and humility, and becomes a salvation officer to 
win poor lost men and women, for whom you say 
Jesus Christ shed His blood? If they were worth 
His blood, surely they are worth your daughter's 
respectability ! Then why, because she chooses to 
sacrifice it, should she be put at a disadvantage com- 
pared with her elder or younger sisters, who spend 
their time in the frivolities of the world? Answer, 
all ye parents, professed followers of the despised 
Nazarene ! 

Oh, the stories I could unfold, the dozens of letters 
that could be produced, pleading with young men 
and women whose hearts God has touched with pity 
for the perishing multitudes : bringing all the con- 
siderations of family ties, worldly position, future 
prospects, wealthy alliances, and I know not what 
else, in order to induce them to turn aside from the 
path of self-sacrifice and whole-hearted abandonment 
to the interests of the kingdom. I sometimes won- 
der that Christian parents and friends dare ■ utter 
such words or pen such letters. I wonder that the 
ink does not turn red as they write, and that their 
accusing consciences do not force them to sign their 
names " Judas."' 

What a different spirit parents and friends mani- 
fest with respect to their children and wards when 
the war-fever seizes the nation ! Mothers give their 
sons — it may be with tears and heartaches — never- 
theless ungrudgingly, to face the horrors of foreign 
warfare, in the shape of loneliness, toil, long march- 
ings, exposure, privation, fever, dysentery, and a deso- 



ITS COWARDLY SERVICE. 



115 



late death ; and in other instances to wounds, loss of 
limbs, enfeebled constitutions, or violent death. Nay, 
women themselves have gone to such a war with the 
bravery of men, making lint, nursing the wounded, 
and inspiring the weak or wavering, and even work- 
ing the guns ; and as one rank has fallen, others 
have rushed in to fill up the bleeding gaps. But is 
it so in this warfare ? It used to be. No grander 
enthusiasm, no more heroic self-sacrifice, no more 
determined abandonment, has ever fired human souls 
than has been exhibited in the cause of Jesus Christ; 
but alas ! it is a long while ago. The Christians of 
this age, as a rule, want all their time, strength, and 
ability, and that of their children also, to enable 
them to climb up the ladder of this world's social pos- 
ition ; to get up, up, from whence God — if Christ's 
teaching means anything — will say, " Thou fool ! " 
and hurl them clown to perdition when they have 
done. 

Friends, is it not true? If so, we ought to go 
down on our faces and weep, and have a confession 
service — first, for those who feel that this truth 
applies to themselves; and second, for those who, 
although their own consciences acquit them, know 
that it applies to thousands round about us. Like 
the prophets of old did, let us humble ourselves for 
the sins of our people. Let us take their iniquities 
on our hearts as far as we may, weep over them, 
confess for them, and pray for them, and then set 
ourselves to try to arouse them up to a sense of 
their responsibility and danger. 



116 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



Further, I charge it on the professors of popular 
Christianity that they have no valor in the fight for 
truth and for God. 

They hold not fast the faith once delivered to the 
saints, but surrender first one point and then another 
of God's revelation to any skeptical heathen who 
may see fit to attack it. They bid Godspeed alike 
to all professed prophets and creeds, simply because 
it is a matter of indifference with them whether 
truth or error shall prevail ; in fact, they are most 
tolerant of false teachers because they propound the 
easiest doctrine, often patronizing the most mon- 
strous contradictions and shameless caricatures of 
the gospel. There can be no doubt that millions of 
souls are being sacrificed to the godless, senseless 
antinomian gospels of the present day, gospels which 
have been hacked and hewed worse than any poor 
vivisected animal. The very standards and land- 
marks of goodness, truth, honesty, chastity, and god- 
liness are broken down, and the people are taught 
that they have nothing to do, to sacrifice, or to 
suffer, in order to be saved and to get into heaven, 
in fact that they can get there as easily by 
the broad road as by the narrow way; and all 
who preach the truth as Christ preached it are stig- 
matized as legal- — as workmongers, as antichrists 
and papists. 

Further, these modern Christians lack all enthu- 
siasm in the warfare. 

Look at their poor, gasping, half-hearted, uncer- 
tain profession of personal religion. They condemn 



ITS COWARDLY SERVICE. 



Ill 



anybody who dares get up and tell out any definite 
change that God has wrought in them, or of any 
glowing experience of the love, sufficiency, and 
power of Christ to save. They characterize all such 
testimony as self-exaltation and vainglory, whereas 
they ought to know that one of the main purposes 
of Christ in establishing a kingdom on the earth was 
that His servants might be His witnesses — not wit- 
nesses merely of His existence, but of His power to 
save from sin and its consequences. They should 
also study the writings of Paul, whom they claim as 
their great apostle, and note his bold, comprehensive, 
and persistent expression of his own personal experi- 
ence, which occupies so large a share of his epistles. 

Look at the cold, stiff, stilted public service of 
these modern Christians; note how they pray, sitting 
looking about, without reverence or decency, while 
their ministers pray for them by proxy ; listen to 
their songs, mostly sung by a few dressed-up dolls 
perched in an organ-loft or singing pew, doing their 
praises for them, perhaps with a profane or drunken 
leader at so much a year. Listen to the preaching, 
— as a rule, cold dissertations and abstractions or 
platitudes, "moving not a hair of the polished 
divine " who utters them, nor of the people who 
listen. An amen or hallelujah would sound almost 
as much out of place as it would be on the gallows ! 
Who would ever imagine that such a minister and 
such worshippers were professedly serving Him of 
whom it was said, " He shall baptize you with the 
Holy Ghost and with, fire " ? Alas, alas ! such wor- 



118 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



shippers have nothing to be enthusiastic about. 
They have no personal participation in the Spirit or 
purposes of their professed Lord, no realization of 
His presence, and no glowing anticipation of His 
predicted triumphs. But watch the change when 
the time for dismissal comes ; see the rush of 
acquaintances at the church or chapel doors to shake 
hands with one another; listen to the rush of 
tongues ; there is plenty of enthusiasm now ! 
Frank's prizes at school or honors at college, Harry's 
promotion in the killing army, Gertrude's recent 
engagement, or Lizzie's new baby, — these are topics 
in which the heart is interested, and so the tongue 
is inspired, and the soul comes forth from its 
lethargy ! Alas for the little children who watch 
the altered countenances and listen to the interested 
tone and manner of mother and father during the 
progress of these congratulations ! No wonder if 
they conclude that this is the reality, and what they 
have been witnessing in the church or chapel is a 
sham. No wonder such a Christianity cannot hold 
its own against the forces of the enemy ; no cause is 
so hopeless as one without enthusiasm. People who 
do not care much are sure to go to the wall. 

Further, I charge these modern Christians with 
a lack of missionary enterprise. 

No wonder, if they reason from the value and 
effect of their religion on their own characters and 
lives, that they do not see the importance of sending 
it to the heathen ; and from all accounts it does no 
more for the heathen abroad than for the Christians 



ITS COWARDLY 



SERVICE. 



119 



at home. Alas, alas ! on all these points popular 
Christianity must be confessed, when weighed in the 
balances of the sanctuary, to be found lamentably 
wanting. 

Friends, what about yours? 

THE REAL WARFARE. 

We will now glance at two or three of the main 
characteristics of that warfare to which Christ has 
called His soldiers. 

First: Christ's soldiers must be imbued with the 
spirit of the war. 

Love to the King and concern for His interests 
must be the master passion of the soul. All out- 
ward effort, even that which springs from a sense of 
duty, will fail without this. The hardship and suf- 
fering involved in real spiritual warfare are too 
great for any motive but that of love. It is said 
that one of the soldiers of Xapoleon, when being 
operated upon for the extraction of a bullet, ex- 
claimed, " Cut a little deeper and you will find my 
general's name,*' meaning that it was engraven on 
his heart. So must the image and glory of Christ be 
engraven on the heart of every successful soldier of 
Christ. It must be the all-subduing passion of his 
life to bring the reign of Jesus Christ over the hearts 
and souls of men. A little child who has this spirit 
will subjugate others to his King, while the most 
talented and learned and active, without it, will 
accomplish comparatively little. If the hearts of 
the Christians of this generation were inspired with 



120 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



this spirit, and set on winning the world for God, 
we should soon see nations shaken to their centre, 
and millions of souls translated into the kingdom. 

Secondly: The soldiers of Christ must be aban- 
doned to the ivar. 

They must be thoroughly committed to God's side : 
there can be no neutrals in this warfare. When the 
soldier enlists and takes the queen's shilling, he 
ceases to be his own property, but becomes the 
property of his country, must go where he is sent, 
stand at any post to which he is assigned, even if it be 
at the cannon's mouth. He gives up the ways and 
comforts of civilians, and goes forth with his life in 
his hand, in obedience to the will of his sovereign. 

If I understand it, that is just what Jesus Christ 
demands of every one of His soldiers, and nothing 
less. 

Some one may ask, " But we cannot all be minis- 
ters, or missionaries, or officers in the Salvation 
Army ; must we not attend to the avocations of 
this life, and work for the bread that perisheth for 
ourselves and our families ? " Certainly, but the 
great end in all we do must be the promotion of the 
kingdom. A man may work in order that he may eat, 
but he must eat to live, not to himself or for the promo- 
tion of his own purposes, but for his King, and for 
the advancement of His interests ; and if his heart is 
really set on this, he will have no desire to work 
at his secular calling longer than is absolutely 
necessary to promote this object. When the 
necessary amount of work is done, he will gladly 



ITS CO WABBLY SERVICE. 



121 



lay aside his implements of husbandry or handicraft 
for the sword of the Spirit, and for the conflict with 
ignorance, vice, and misery. Instead of spending 
his evenings in ease and self-indulgence, he will 
betake himself to the streets or other places of 
resort for the people, and will spend what would 
have been his leisure hours in pressing on them the 
claims of God and of His truth. There will be no 
running away, no forsaking of the cross, no shrink- 
ing from the hard places of the field; but a deter- 
mined pushing of the battle to the gate, even amid 
weariness, opposition, and sometimes in the face of 
dire defeat. I ask, Was it any less a devotion than 
this which actuated the martyrs and confessors of 
old ? Have I depicted an abandonment greater than 
that which they understood to be their duty and 
privilege ? ■ If they might have drawn back, why 
did they persevere, many of them, through long 
years of conflict and persecution, culminating in 
stripes, imprisonment, and death ? It is evident 
that they understood fidelity to Christ to involve 
the most perfect self-abandonment, both in life and 
in death. 

Then, third : Christ's soldiers must understand 
the tactics of war. 

In order to do this, they must make it a subject of 
earnest and prayerful study how to make the most 
of their time, talents, money, or any other resources 
which God may have placed at their command for 
the advancement of the kingdom. They must think 
and scheme how best to attack the enemy. Only 



122 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



think of the time, trouble, skill, and money that are 
expended by great killing armies in planning for 
stratagem, and manoeuvre in order to surprise and 
overcome their enemies. Some of you will remem- 
ber reading, in the records of the last German and 
French war, that the German officers were better 
acquainted with the geography of France than the 
French themselves ; they knew every road, by-way, 
and field, likely to be available for their purpose. 
Think of the time and trouble that must have been 
expended in becoming thus familiar with a foreign 
country, and compare this with the hap-hazard, rule- 
of-thumb kind of way in which spiritual warfare is 
for the most part conducted. Think of the undi- 
gested schemes and abortive plans, throwing away 
both labor and money, embarked in by professed 
Christian soldiers, who have never, perhaps, spent a 
clay's anxious thought and prayer over them in their 
lives. Think also of the shameful indifference — 
which cannot be characterized as warfare at all — of 
the ordinary services and arrangements of the 
churches. It often makes my heart ache as I pass 
some stately, closed-up church or chapel, with its 
antiquated board with a shame-faced, insignificant 
announcement that the "Reverend So-and-so will 
preach," or a " Gospel address will be delivered " at 
such a time on such a day ; in which it is evident 
nothing is contemplated beyond securing the eye 
and attention of those who already have a liking for 
going to churches and chapels. And as I some- 
times read the lists of meetings connected with ordi- 



ITS CO WABBLY SERVICE. 



123 



nary churches, I say to myself, "As it was in the 
beginning, is now, and ever shall be," is evidently 
the creed of the originators of this programme, not 
with respect, perhaps, to the doctrines they preach, 
but with respect to the old-fashioned, effete methods 
by which they continue to publish them. Oh, is it 
not time that the professed children of light should 
learn, as the great Captain of our salvation exhorted 
them, wisdom by contrast with the children of dark- 
ness? 

As I heard some friends talking the other day 
about the rescue of Gordon, and listened to their 
calculations as to the probable cost being some mil- 
lions of money, and perhaps thousands of lives, I 
could not help thinking, yes, and I suppose all Eng- 
land (the Christians included) will think this quite 
a legitimate expenditure of both money and life to 
rescue this one man and the little band who is with 
him ; and yet, if we were to ask for a few millions 
of money, and propose to sacrifice a few hundreds of 
lives in the rescue of millions of the human race 
from a bondage of misery and destruction ten thous- 
and times more appalling than that which threatens 
General Gordon, they would call us mad enthusiasts 
and senseless fanatics. Alas, alas ! we may well ask, 
Where is the zeal of the Christians of this genera- 
tion for the Lord of hosts ? How much do they care 
about His reign over the hearts of their fellow-men ? 
What is their appreciation of the present and eter- 
nal benefits embraced in His salvation ; or what is 
their estimate of the " crown of life " which he prom- 



124 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



ises to give to every one of His conquering soldiers ? 

Fourth : The soldiers of Christ must believe in 
victory. 

Faith in victory is an indispensable condition to 
successful warfare of any kind. It is universally 
recognized by generals of killing armies, that if the 
enthusiasm of expected conquest be destroyed, and 
their troops imbued with fear and doubt as to the 
ultimate result, defeat is all but certain. This is 
equally true with respect to spiritual warfare, hence 
the repeated and comprehensive assurance and prom- 
ises of victory from the great Captain of our salva- 
tion. 

The true soldier of Christ, who has the spirit of 
the war and who is abandoned to its interests, has 
an earnest in his soul of coming victory. He knows 
it is only a question of time, and time is nothing to 
love ! As he is lying in the trenches, or taking long 
marches, or suffering for the want of common neces- 
saries, or enduring the sharpest bayonets or heaviest 
fire of the enemy, or lying wounded, overcome by 
fatigue, pressed by discouragement, realizing the 
greatness of the conflict in contrast with his own 
weakness — in the very darkest hours and sever- 
est straits, he has the herald of coming victory sound- 
ing in his ears. The faithful soldier knows that he 
shall win, and that his King will ultimately reign, 
not only over a few, but over all the kingdoms of 
this earth, and that He must reign till He has put 
all enemies under His feet. This faith inspires Him 
to endure hardship and to suffer loss, to hold on. 



ITS COWARDLY SERVICE. 



125 



He never thinks of turning his back to the foe, or 
shirking the cross, or turning the stones into bread, 
or of trying to shorten the march. He never thinks 
of withdrawing from the thick of .the fight, but goes 
on through perils by land, by sea, by his own coun- 
trymen, by the heathen, by false brethren at home 
and abroad. He looks onward through the dark 
clouds to the proud moment when the King will 
say, " Well done, good and faithful servant!" He 
listens, and above the din of the earthly conflict he 
hears the words, " Be thou faithful unto death, and 
I will give thee a crown of life ! " 



LECTURE V. 



Popular. Christianity: Its Shave Judgment in 
Contrast with the Great White Throne. 



ITS SHAM JUDGMENT. 

Many people dislike the very sound of the word 
judgment. They have abandoned, as far as they 
can, any belief in a judgment to come, and they 
ignore as uncharitable and severe any expression of 
judgment as to the doings and characters of individ- 
uals in the present ; but somehow the instincts of 
humanity are too strong for them, and these very 
people find themselves, in spite of their theories, 
pronouncing judgment both on themselves and 
others every day of their lives. 

God has reared a judgment seat in every man's 
conscience, which in some slight measure answers 
to, and prefigures the sentence which He declares 
He will pronounce on every man's action, whether 
it be good or bad. 

Then if there is a great Judge of all, and a 
standard of right and wrong which He has set 
up, it must be of supreme importance that we should 
126 



ITS SHAM JUDGMENT. 



127 



correctly understand what this standard is, and that 
we should judge of the conduct of ourselves and of 
those around us according to it. Surely nothing 
could be more deceptive and soul-ruining than to 
accept as correct any short of the one unalterable 
and eternal standard of righteousness and truth 
which he has laid down ; and yet, alas ! popular 
Christianity distinguishes itself by nothing more 
than by a systematic misrepresentation of right and 
wrong, calling evil good and good evil. Just as in 
the days of Christ the spirit and essence of the law 
of God was set aside and made of no effect by tra- 
ditional interpretations of the letter, so in our time 
interpretations and expositions, in direct antagonism 
to the plainest words of Christ, are palmed upon 
the world by many of the official representatives of 
Christianity, who back up their false tenets by 
quotations from " the word," separated from their 
explanatory connections, and made to sanction 
views and practices the very opposite to the mind 
and intention of their Divine Author. 

In pointing out as plainly as I am able a few of 
these misrepresentations, I know only too well I 
shall lay mj^self open to criticism, and that I may 
even run the risk of wounding some hearts that I 
would fain cheer. But the vital importance of the 
subject will not permit me to pass it over lightly. 

First: "Judge not that ye be not judged " is one 
of the favorite texts of popular Christianity, which 
is interpreted to mean that we are on no account to 
form an opinion of the rightness or wrongness of 



128 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



anybody's conduct. Under the specious guise of 
charity, faith and unbelief, obedience to God and 
disobedience, sin and holiness, are to be confounded 
in- one indiscriminate hodge-podge, and their actors 
and abettors treated exactly alike, making no separ- 
ation between the precious and the vile. 

This spurious charity is pushed to such an extent 
that even the man who has pledged himself to 
preach certain doctrines, and who is actually em- 
ployed as the agent of a Church for so doing, is not 
to be condemned if his "riper judgment" should 
lead him to renounce those doctrines ; while at the 
same time he holds fast the salary and position with 
which he was entrusted in view of his original en- 
gagement. 

On the same principle we are asked to allow that 
people who never go to a place of worship or bow 
their knees in prayer may be as good and faithful 
servants' of God as any others. We are told that 
perhaps they are carrying out " the Divine will in a 
spirit of true devotion to duty, " that working is 
praying, and that a man's belief bounds his responsi- 
bility, and so forth. 

" We are all aiming at the same thing " is a favor- 
ite way of expressing this popular Christianity, 
which just suits the ideas of drunkards, adulterers, 
and liars, as well as of shallow professors. 

To declare positively that people are sinners, con- 
demned already, and on their way to hell, is ac- 
counted as " uncharitable judging, " " really dread- 
ful, " and no one, we are told, can possibly be justi- 
fied in coming to such a conclusion. 



ITS SHAM JUDGMENT. 



129 



All this we could understand perfectly, coming 
from the camps of infidelity or from the haunts of 
vice ; but to find it passed off in connection with the 
name and teachings of Jesus Christ is monstrous in- 
deed. What a sham to worship Him who declares 
Himself to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life, if 
there be no certain way, no definable difference be- 
tween the true and the false, no practical separation 
between the Christ life and the life without Christ! 
Surely it is high time for all who care about the 
reign of Christ on the earth to make up their minds 
to one thing or the other. If Christ be our master 
let us learn His lessons, and abide by His rule, and 
obey His commands. If, on the other hand, some 
are unwilling to see any difference between the nar- 
row and the broad road, between those who are in 
the kingdom of God or out of it, who are with Christ 
or against Him, let them be honest enough to de- 
clare openly that they have no Christ and will have 
no prophet but " Society. " 

Another text which might be taken as setting 
forth a very favorite theory of modern Christianity 
is that in which Paul personified the struggles of a 
convicted but unsaved soul : "For the good that I 
would I do not : but the evil which I would not, 
that I do. " We are all to look upon ourselves as 
u poor, incapable, fallible creatures, " and this as- 
sumed humility is to absolve us from all condemna- 
tion, on account either of doing evil or neglecting to 
do good. Instead of condemning ourselves or 
others, when convicted of some flagrant wrong or 



130 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



manifest inconsistency, we are to look upon it as 
only what might have been expected. How often 
have I heard people say, with regard to some man 
holding an official position of great responsibility in 
the Church, " Well, he does not do this, that, or 
the other (whatever may be the duty in question) 
as he might , but, you know, he can't do everything." 
Such an apology as this would be beautiful in the 
extreme, applied to those who are known to be earn- 
estly and faithfully striving to do their share for the 
extension of the kingdom of God ; but when applied, 
as I have generally heard it, to what everyone knows 
to be a systematic and inexcusable neglect of every- 
day duty, it is no more nor less than a wholesale 
cloaking of sin. But, friends, whatever you do, 
never allow your minds for a moment to trifle with 
questions of duty, for nothing can be more fatal to 
either body or soul than to give way to the theory 
that one really cannot be expected to do what one 
ought. 

How differently people treat this question of do- 
ing their duty in commercial matters. Imagine the 
business man who cannot attend to all his customers, 
or who thinks it unnecessary to keep his place of 
business open all the week and every week. What 
would you think of a servant who should consider 
it unreasonable to get up at the proper time every 
morning, or carry out your wishes in matters in 
which her views differed from yours? How long 
could society hang together if this looseness of 
thought as to what we ought and ought not to do 



ITS SHAM JUDGMENT. 



131 



were permitted to enter into the sphere of every : day 
life ? But alas, alas ! how much more ruinous is 
this looseness when it relates to our great spiritual 
duties towards God and our fellow-creatures. Either 
you ought or you ought not always to pray and not 
to faint' — to learn and to do the will of God, to care 
for perishing souls, to warn, counsel, and help those 
around you; and what applies to you applies to all 
who take upon them the name of Christ in any way 
whatever. We should never, on any account, allow 
ourselves to excuse any neglect of God and duty, 
because such neglect is all but universal, but we 
should look at things as they are, and in the light 
of the judgment throne ; and when we see conduct 
worthy of condemnation, condemn it, and be deter- 
mined to separate ourselves in heart and life from 
evil practices, however much respected they may be, 
and to take our stand on the side of duty and of 
God at all costs. 

I tell you honestly that I have turned away num- 
berless times of late years, and with almost despair- 
ing disgust, from audiences of what would be called 
intelligent Christians, that is to say, persons who talk 
and act upon an intelligent view of any imaginable 
subject except that of Christian duty. How often 
do I hear the remark, "We know things are not as 
they should be," from people who have not the 
slightest intention of striving in any way to make 
things better, and who would not on any account, 
incur the odium of expressing any condemnation on 
that neglect of religious duty which they profess so 



132 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



much to deplore. Away with this unmanly, un- 
womanly cowardice. We have the light; let us 
come to it in order to see whether our deeds, and 
the deeds of those around us who profess to be 
"working for God," are wrought in Him. We can 
by God's grace, do our duty, if we will. As we 
tried to show in a former lecture, Christ came on 
purpose to empower us to do it ; but let those who 
will not have such a doctrine and such a Christ, but 
who prefer to accept the miserable theories of im- 
potency, which would not be tolerated for a moment 
in the kitchen, the shop, or the exchange, — let them 
at least save Christ from the indignity of having 
such helpless, incapable creatures called by His 
name, and professing to be His followers. He says 
with respect to all such, " Why call ye Me^ Lord, 
Lord, and do not the things that I say ? " 

"But the Lord looks at the heart" is another of the 
pet doctrines of popular Christianity. 

True, terribly true in the right sense, — for God is 
not to be mocked with lip service or the formality of 
worship in which the heart has no share,— but false, 
ruinously false, when it means, as it generally does, 
that all sorts of wrong may be passed over and ex- 
cused, if people only say they mean to do right. 

I rejoice beyond all expression in the precious 
thought of the Lord's longsuffering and tender mercy 
toward those who sit in darkness ; and if we were 
living in the centre of Africa, where people have 
been trained only to fear and worship some hideous 
imaginary power of evil, — if we had absolutely no 



ITS SHAM JUDGMENT. 



133 



spirit of truth, and no word of light to hear or to 
read, no knowledge of God or a Saviour, — it might 
be admissible to consider everybody right who meant 
right ; but even those in this country who are most 
sceptical as to divine revelation cannot pretend to 
be in any such position as this, much less people who 
profess to call themselves Christians. Is there any- 
body here taking refuge in this hollow subterfuge? 
Friend, let me ask you, did you really worship and 
serve God last Sunday? Had you any convictions 
as to what He wished you to do, not only on that 
day but throughout the following week? If so, 
have you acted on them, have you honestly tried to 
carry them out? If not, do not, I beseech you, try 
to pacify your conscience with any silly nonsense 
about the Lord looking at the heart. He has plainly 
told us over and over again in the New Testament, 
and in the very last book of it, that He will judge 
every man according to his tvorks, and, moreover, 
He has laid down the same rule of judgment for us. 
"By their fruits ye shall know them." " Little chil- 
dren, let no man deceive you : he that doeth right- 
eousness is righteous." I fear there are thousands 
of professed Christians excusing themselves from 
the performance of the most manifest duty by this 
excuse ; for instance, when a prayer meeting is an- 
nounced, there are a certain number of people who 
make an effort to be present, but a much larger 
number of so-called Christians who deliberately 
choose to keep away. It is quite allowable to apply 
the doctrine of the Lord's looking at the heart to the 



134 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



poor mother who would fain be there, were she not de- 
tained by the inexorable claims of half a dozen little 
children; but to cloak over with the same excuse, the 
constant indifference, nay, positive irreligion, in the 
great majority, is only to refuse to come to the light 
because it would condemn you. People who mean 
well, where there is no physical impossibility in the 
way, do. well \ but those who fail to do well, will fare 
ill when the great reckoning day comes. 

Further, I charge it upon popular Christianity, 
even when it does pay some tribute to the truth with 
regard to character, by recognizing here and there 
what it calls an " excellent man," or a " noble wo- 
man, " that when you come to examine into the 
meaning of these phrases, they are, in many instan- 
ces, utterly misleading. Most generally the persons 
thus eulogized are distinguished, rather for the lack 
of those peculiar characteristics set forth by Christ 
and His apostles as of supreme importance, than by 
the possession of them. Just try to call up a person 
so distinguished within your own knowledge, and 
ask yourself how they have earned their title. To 
begin with, do they excel in prayer, or are they in 
most cases persons who were never known to pray in 
public, or, at any rate, without being specially called 
upon to do so ? Or, are they renowned for praying 
by the bedsides of the sick, or even with their own 
families in the privacy of their own homes? Do 
these persons excel in faith, shown by their works 
in the way of bold, straightforward testimony for 
God, or in daring, unpopular enterprises for the sal- 



ITS SHAM JUDGMENT. 



135 



vation of men ? or are they generally silent both 
in public and private., giving no personal testimony 
as to their knowledge of Christ, and carefully ab- 
staining from any outward demonstration on His 
behalf, which would bring them into discredit with 
their neighbors ? Probably they do excel in what 
is called charity ; but is not this generally due to the 
fact that they are much richer than others, and only 
-out of their enormous abundance do they contribute 
occasionally large sums for Christian or philanthrop- 
ic objects. What a name may be acquired in mod- 
ern Christendom by the judicious use of a few hun- 
dred pounds per year, without so much as speaking 
a kind word to a brother or sister in need, or deny- 
ing yourself a moment's ease or a single luxury ! 
Is it not notorious that in ninety-nine cases out of a 
hundred it is simply the possession of a certain 
amount of wealth which gives a man or woman his 
or her grade in religious as well as in civil society, 
and that people chosen for and entrusted with lead- 
ing positions in churches, are simply those who have 
the best houses of their own ? By-and-by their splen- 
did coffins will be pompously deposited in the fam- 
ily vault, and you will be told that they " maintained 
an unblemished character for many years ; " that is 
to say, they neither got drunk, blasphemed, commit- 
ted robbery, nor picked anybody's pocket. The}" 
lived in society in such a style as made them wel- 
come in the circles of semi-worldliness everywhere. 
Their linen and their dresses were unblemished, for 
they never turned aside, like their Divine Master, 



136 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



into any of the soiling habitations of the poor and the 
wretched, nor mingled amongst such mobs as con- 
tinually jostled Him all the way through life. Their 
names were always mentioned with honor, for they 
took care never to let them be used in connection 
with any enterprise, even on behalf of Jesus Christ, 
which was not considered " quite the thing." 

Do not misunderstand me. I am very far from 
wishing to pour contempt upon such persons, for 
without them what would become of the churches 
and of benovelent enterprises generally ? I do not 
question that many of these individuals have at one 
time or other been converted, and might have be- 
come true saints, had they been faithfully dealt with: 
but alas ! they have, to a great extent, been made 
the victims of that sham judgment which now se- 
lects them as its standard-bearers. Of many of them. 
I doubt not, it might be written, were Jesus Christ 
again amongst us, and were they brought in contact 
with Him, that He looked upon them and loved 
them, notwithstanding all their worldliness and 
pride of position. But what I want to point out is, 
that such persons are not distinguished by popular 
Christianity for the peculiarly Christ-like traits in 
their characters, but for the possession and use of 
a long purse. This exaltation of mere morality with 
money stamps modern Christianity as an unjust judge, 
and it will be fatal to your views of what Christ de- 
mands of you, if you accept its model men and wo- 
men as the representatives of Christian excellence. 

Fifth: As I have before remarked, there has come 



ITS SHAM JUDGMENT. 



137 



over society of late quite a fever of professed benev- 
olence towards the poor; and yet, in connection 
with this very pleasing awakening to the existence 
of millions of miserable people, we have another 
striking illustration of the sham judgment of 
modern Christendom. " Those wretched, filthy 
people*' are simply the poorer classes, who are com- 
pelled by their poverty to herd together by families 
in small rooms, surrounding perhaps a court-yard 
full of oyster-shells and other refuse, at which 
society — and Christian society, too — turns up its 
nose, and declares that the people breathe an u at- 
mosphere of moral pollution.*' Perfectly true there 
is an atmosphere of moral pollution present in these 
dark alleys and horrible dens, to which people are 
driven by thousands, that others may have plenty 
of room in which to carry out their ideas of civiliza- 
tion ; but to eyes that look at things in the light of 
God, I say there is an atmosphere of moral pollution 
not a whit less dangerous, and far more blame- 
worthy, in very different circles. 

Is it not notorious that multitudes of people 
amongst what are called the higher classes deliber- 
ately denude themselves of ordinary clothing, and 
then go in a half-dressed condition, with every ad- 
dition of ornament that can be conceived, to insure 
that they shall be noticed and admired, to large 
places of public amusement ? Is there not a grow- 
ing disposition in Christian circles to look upon it as 
perfectly harmless for Christian families, including 
often those of ministers, to spend hours together, 



138 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



dressed in the way I have described, at parties, balls 
and other entertainments, frequently given within 
the precincts of some consecrated building, or in or- 
der to raise money for church purposes ? Now, I 
ask, how it comes to pass that the poor are spoken 
of as herding together without regard for decency 
under the circumstances of necessity which I have 
described ; while the herding together of the rich 
and well-to-do in this voluntary indecency should be 
regarded with complacency and described as refined 
and genteel? That such is the judgment of mod- 
ern Christendom can only be attributed to one fact 
— the power of the purse; and that the churches 
should in [the main devote their attention to the 
well-to-do classes, while they regard the masses of 
the people as a kind of outside element, to be 
operated upon by separate agencies, as a few mis- 
sionaries or Bible-women, is, I contend, a crying 
scandal to the Saviour's name. The judgment of 
Jesus Christ led Him to spend most of His time 
herding with fishermen, with publicans and sinners. 
Their language might often be very violent and bad 
and their home life simply scandalous ; but the Son 
of God preferred to make His bed in a fishing-boat, 
and to sit talking with that infamous woman of 
Samaria, rather than to hobnob with the religious 
swelldom of Jerusalem, the outside of whose cup 
and platter would have passed muster with modern 
Christianity whilst their lives were full of hypocrisy 
and unrighteousness. 

Sixth : " The brutal tastes of the lower orders " is 
another pet phrase of modern Christendom. 



ITS SHAM JUDGMENT. 



139 



It represents the idea that for a poor man, who 
has to keep himself and his family on a few shillings 
per week by hard labor, which takes away all incli- 
nation towards study or more exalted pursuits, it is 
a brutal taste to like to have a quart of fourpenny 
beer as often as his scanty means will allow. It is 
a brutal taste to take pleasure in seeing two men 
fight each other with their fists, inflicting in the 
course of half an hour many hard knocks and 
bruises ; and it is a still more brutal taste which 
leads men to train animals to fight each other, and 
to take pleasure in seeing them do so. Now, J per- 
fectly concur in the denunciation of all these evils, 
from which God is enabling the Salvation Army to 
rescue multitudes of these poor, so-called " brutal 
fellows : " but let us turn the light of truth upon 
the Christian society which shrugs its shoulders in 
horror at the mere description of these men who get 
drunk and beat their wives ; the Christian society 
whose refined taste leads it to have as little inter- 
course as possible with these lower orders. 

What sort of taste is it, which, in the presence of 
the existing state of things among the poor, spends 
not fourpence but four shillings, and double and 
treble that sum on a single bottle of wine for the 
jovial entertainment of a few friends, and from 
twenty to forty pounds for a dinner to be swallowed 
by a dozen or two of people ? I maintain that no 
splendid furniture, no well-trained and liveried ser- 
vants, no costly pictures or display of finery or 
jew r els, can redeem such a scene, viewed in the light 



140 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



of the teachings of Christ, from being worthy of 
being called " brutal," and all the more brutal be- 
cause it is delighted in by persons whose intelligence 
and knowledge of the awful state of things in the 
world around them must make them fully aware of 
the good that might be done with the money which 
they thus lavish upon their lusts. 

Let me take you to another scene. Here is His 
Grace, the Duke of Rackrent, and the Right Honor- 
able Woman Seducer, Fitz-Shameless ; and the gal- 
lant Colonel Swearer, with half the aristocracy of a 
county, male and female, mounted on horses worth 
hundreds of pounds each, and which have been bred 
and trained at a cost of hundreds more, and what 
for? "This splendid field" are waiting whilst a 
poor little timid animal is let loose from confinement 
and permitted to fly in terror from its strange sur- 
roundings. Observe the delight of all the gentlemen 
and noble ladies when a whole pack of strong dogs 
is let loose in pursuit, and then behold the noble 
chase ! The regiment of well-mounted cavalry and 
the pack of hounds all charge at full gallop after the 
poor frightened little creature. It will be a great 
disappointment if by any means it should escape, or 
be killed within as short a time as an hour. The 
sport will be excellent in proportion to the time 
during which the poor thing's agony is prolonged, 
and the number of miles it is able to run in terror of 
its life. Brutality ! I tell you, that in my judgment, 
at any rate, you can find nothing in the vilest back 
slums more utterly, more deliberately, more savagely 



ITS SHAM JUDGMENT. 



141 



cruel than all that ; and yet this is a comparatively 
small thing. One of the greatest employments of 
every Christian government and community is to 
train thousands of men, not to fight with their fists on- 
ly, in the way of inflicting a few passing sores, but with 
weapons capable, it may be, of killing human beings 
at the rate of so many per minute. It is quite a 
"scientific taste" to study how to destroy a large 
vessel with several hundreds of men on board instan- 
taneously. Talk of brutality ! Is there anything 
half as brutal as this within the whole range of row- 
dyism? But against all this, modern Christianity, 
which professes to believe the teachings of Him who 
taught us not to resist evil, but to love our enemies, 
and to treat with the utmost benevolence hostile na- 
tions, has nothing to say. All the devilish animosity, 
hard-hearted cruelty, and harrowing consequences 
of modern warfare, are not only sanctioned but held 
up as an indispensable necessity of civilized life, and 
in times of war, patronized and prayed for in our 
churches and chapels, with as much impudent assur- 
ance as though Jesus Christ had taught, " But I say 
unto you, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and, 
return evil for evil, hate your enemies and pursue 
them with all the diabolical appliances of destruc- 
tion which the devil can enable you to invent." 
Alas, alas ! is it not too patent for intelligent contra- 
diction that the most detestable and brutal thing in 
the judgment of popular Christianity is not brutality, 
cruelty or injustice, but poverty and vulgarity? 
With plenty of money you may pile up your life 



142 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



with iniquities, and yet be blamed, if blamed at all, 
only in the mildest terms, whereas one flagrant sin 
in a poor and illiterate person is enough to stamp 
him, with a majority of professing Christians, as a 
creature from whom they would rather keep at a dis- 
tance. I had an amusing corroboration of this the 
other day from one of my younger daughters who 
had been visiting a poor criminal in one of our large 
prisons. She said to one of the officers in attendance, 
" I suppose you do not often have rich people in here?" 
He replied, "No, miss, w r e very seldom get anybody 
but poor folks," and on her replying, " Xo, I am 
afraid it is because you do not look out so sharply 
for them," he remarked to a fellow 7 " officer, " She's 
all there." 

Seventh: Further, "the criminal classes" is an- 
other of the cant phrases of modern Christianity, 
which thus brands every poor lad who steals, be- 
cause he is -hungry, but stands, hat in hand, before 
the rich man whose trade is well known to be a sys- 
tem of wholesale cheatery. 

It is never convenient for ministers or responsible 
churchwardens or deacons to ask how Mr. Money- 
maker gets the golden sovereigns or crisp notes 
which look so well in the collection. He may be 
the most " accursed sweater " wdio ever waxed fat on 
that murderous cheap needlework system, which is 
slowly destroying the bodies and ruining the souls 
of thousands of poor women, both in this and other 
" civilized " countries. He may keep scores of em- 
ployees standing wearily sixteen hours per day be- 



ITS SHAM JUDGMENT, 



143 



Iiind the counter, across which they dare not speak 
the truth, and on salaries so small that all hope of 
marriage and home is denied to them. Or he may 
trade in some damning thing which robs men of all 
that is good in this world and all hope for the next, 
such as opium or intoxicating drinks ; but if you 
were simple enough to suppose that modern Chris- 
tianity would object to him on account of any of 
these things, — in fact, that vou were alluding to 
such as he, in the phrase " criminal classes, " — how 
respectable Christians would open their eyes, and, in 
fact, suspect that you had recently made your escape 
from some lunatic asylum, and ought to be hastened 
back there as soon as possible. If any one should 
dare to cast any reflections upon any of these Christ- 
tian money-makers, the . representatives of their 
churches would say, 4i Hush, hush, my dear sir, Mr. 
So-and-so is the great man at our place, you know ; 
they would be glad enough of him at the church op- 
posite, but he likes our minister, and we mean to 
propose him as a deacon at the next church meet- 
ing/' So the wholesale and successful thief is 
glossed over and called by all manner of respectable 
names by the representatives of a bastard Christian- 
ity. It is ready enough to cry, Stop, thief ! when 
some poor fellow who has been out of work for per- 
haps months, gets desperate at the sight of children 
crying for bread, and makes a bungling attempt at 
getting what is not his own in order to satisfy them ; 
or when it hears that such men, left helplessly to 
their own devices, take to living together, and bring- 



144 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



ing up a generation of thieves, it cries out vigorously 
against the criminals. Sure, it may suggest a mis- 
sion to them, and even set about it in a helpless, 
patronizing sort of way, wondering if really it is of 
any use to try to help "such men," as though they 
were of different flesh and blood to themselves. 
Verily such Christianity is of different blood from 
Him who preferred talking to a thief in His own last 
moments, to holding conversation with any priest or 
white-washed temple worshipper standing around. 
The man who hung by His side was a great ruffian, 
no doubt, but then he had been trained in that way ; 
and if we want the judgment of Jesus Christ on 
such a point, He would certainly give it against the 
pet of modern Christianity, and in favor of this poor 
rough. The man whom Jesus Christ consigned to 
a hopeless perdition was he who made long prayers, 
and at the same time devoured widows' houses; or 
whose barns were filled with plenty while Lazarus 
lay covered with sores at his gates. 

On no point does the sham judgment of popular 
Christianity appear more startlingly in contrast with 
that of Jesus Christ, than on the every-day question 
of honesty. It knows that its rich tradesmen are so 
dishonest in their modes of carrying on their busi- 
ness, that if some poor fellow comes out of prison, 
determined to do right and earn his bread honestly, 
we know scarcely any with whom we dare entrust 
him, and with whom he would not be tempted to 
break his resolution, by being asked to tell business 
lies* or perform business tricks, which to his " un- 



ITS SHAM JUDGMENT. 



145 



christianized " intelligence is only another mode of 
thieving ; but Christianity goes on, with virtuous 
breath declaring that the poor and found-out thieves 
are criminals, while the rich and secret scoundrels 
are the valued supporters of her institutions. 

Further: " Desecrating the Sabbath" is another 
virtuous-sounding phrase, which is accepted as the 
expression of a very reverential religion. So it should 
be, but here the sham judgment comes in again ! 
What is desecrating the Sabbath? Well, it is not 
dressing up in fabulously costly clothes (sometimes 
unpaid for), as near in fabric, style, and fashion as 
can be to those worn in the very vilest services of 
sin. It is not to lie in bed consuming the early 
hours of the day, and then to flaunt in this array to 
one short service, as an exhibition of self and respect- 
ability, spending the remainder of the " sacred day " 
in an easy chair with the last new book. This is 
Sabbath keeping, even though to carry it out com- 
fortably, servants may have to work over an elabor- 
ate dinner, or the turning out of a luxuriant equip- 
age. Then what is 46 desecrating " ? Well, go and 
spend next Sunday evening in Mr. Easy's mansion, 
and he will show you. You will not have an un- 
pleasant time, that is, if your notions agree with his. 
He will give you a splendid meal, and then you will 
be allowed to lounge on one of his soft couches, 
while your host tells you spicy stories about the 
popular ministers of his denomination, or his daugh- 
ter will play to you some " sacred " music on the 
piano or the harp. Fire and lamp-light will gleam 



i 



146 



POPULAR CHRIS TIAXITY. 



softly, and thick curtains shut out the night, about 
which some one will occasionally remark that it is 
" awful weather." 

Presently a harsh, discordant sound is heard, like 
shouting and singing with some brass instrumental 
music all mixed up : and if yoii looked out you would 
see a little handful of men and women, wet and mud- 
stained, nearly exhausted in the struggle with rain 
and storm, and the half rough, half good-natured 
crowd, who have been allured out of yonder alley, 
and are now going, swearing pushing, rolling along, 
in a fashion of their own, to a little room, or a low 
music-hall, where these tambourine players and the 
rest do congregate. Your host will jump up with 
an annoyed air, and exclaim with great emphasis, 
"Desecrating the Sabbath, that is what I call it ! " 
and he will go on to expound his views until you 
understand that it is a Sabbath breaking for those 
poor folks to have made a noise in the street, even 
though they were only doing what David and Jesus 
Christ insisted was to be done — praising God with 
a loud voice, and confessing Him before all men. 
For, " Blessed be the name of the Lord ! " or " Glory ! 
halelujah ! " certainly had rung clearly out above 
the din with almost tragic earnestness. You will 
learn that your host's son and daughter have kept 
the Sabbath by singing in the church choir, although 
you see them later on, the one reading a novel, the 
other strolling out of the house with a cigar and a 
hint about returning with the latch-key. Now I 
charge it upon popular Christianity that its profes- 



ITS SHAM JUDGMENT. 



147 



sors know all the miserable desecration which lies 
under the whole modern keeping of the day, and 
yet have not courage to condemn, but keep their 
blame for some effort to serve the Lord which they 
deem vulgar and distasteful. Modern Christendom 
gives its judgment in favor of the hollow, conven- 
tional sacredness of the performance of the dressed 
up choir, whose very manner and countenance often 
betray the irreligion and frivolity of their hearts, 
and which neither wins the souls of sinners nor stirs 
the souls of saints ; but reserves its strongest cen- 
sure for the unscientific, rough-and-ready brass band, 
which empties the public houses and gets sinners 
saved by scores and hundreds. 

Further : " The Sanctuary," according to modern 
Christian theories, is a " holy place," and yet a 
place where no one must speak of being now and 
actually holy ! In fact, it is a place where scarcely 
anybody except the minister may say a word to, or 
for God; where such a scene as that recorded in 1 
Cor. xiv. 23-31 would be counted the highest fanati- 
cism, and next door to blasphemy. I have heard of 
a congregation being actually thrown into dismay 
by the cry to God for mercy of some poor sinner 
who had been previously convicted, and gone to 
that chapel in the hope of finding the way of salva- 
tion ; but he had a near escape of being ejected by 
the beadle. Better everybody refrain their feet from 
going to these modern sanctuaries, than have a 
crowd of rough, needy sinners really wanting light 
and needing to be brought to repentance and salva- 



148 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



tion. " Keep silence before me," says modern Chris- 
tian society, and not a word is breathed to hurt its 
feelings. It is a literal fact that in these modern 
sanctuaries any manifestation of the LIVING god is 
the last thing expected or desired. Imagine the 
scare and horror of excitement and the intense sur- 
prise if He came, as He did once in an upper room, 
with His baptism of fire, in the middle of one of 
these quiet and soothing services next Sunday morn- 
ing ! There would be a quicker and more precipi- 
tous exit of many of the professed worshippers than 
there was from the temple when He drove them out 
with a scourge of small cords ! The great work 
nearest to His heart — the gathering in of the poor, 
the maimed, the halt, and the blind, or the victims 
of sin, debauchery, and crime, the thieves and the 
harlots — is the very last thing desired and expected 
in these modem sanctuaries. That He should speak 
in what is called His own " house " is the last thing 
arranged for. Alas, alas ! do not these facts prove 
that these are the temples of Mammon, of respecta- 
bility, of miserable, hollow, Pharisaic profession, 
where all manner of ungodliness is glossed over by 
what answers to the tithing of mint, anise, and cum- 
min? and yet Christianity baptizes these temples 
with her name, and holds up to ridicule and con- 
tempt the open-air ring, where poor, simple, but 
devout and consecrated people, plead with God to 
speak, and try to make the world hear His message. 

Further : " He is much to be condemned ! " 

What for? 



ITS SHAM JUDGMENT, 



149 



Never, as we have shown, because he is taking it 
too easy; never because he is enjoying a thousand a 
year, and letting men go on in sin undisturbed; nev- 
er because he makes no straightforward, bold con- 
fession of Christ, or takes not up his cross to follow 
Him ; never because he does not deny himself even the 
luxuries indulged by others in his "position," in or- 
der that he may push on the interests of the kingdom 
of God in the world ! ! " But lie is much to be con- 
demned" who gets into trouble, — into a row, as it is 
politely termed, — for Christ's sake. Modem Chris- 
tians ask with bated breath, " Why ever should he 
have gone and stirred up the moral cesspools all 
around him, filling the atmosphere with 'moral pol- 
lution ' ? How could he be so quixotic and fanatical 
as to expect to make things better where the bishops 
and clergy, and all the most influential good people 
of the day, had long decided that it was better left 
alone? We really cannot pity him," say these mod- 
ern Christians, " if he is set upon and traduced and 
persecuted by all the libertines and whoremongers of 
the age ; we fear that he is seeking notoriety, and 
posing to be a martyr ! ! " And thus this bastard 
Christianity adds its bann to the curses of God's 
enemies on the man who has not done well for him- 
self, but who has dared to stand up for the poor and 
helpless, for broken-hearted mothers and fathers, 
and for the innocent and infant victims of the devils 
of lust and villainy, incarnate in the persons of rich 
debauchees. Modern Christianity has got rid, to a 
great extent, of damnation, but it can damn right 



150 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



vigorously in its own fashion all those who "go to 
extremes." It can pour its half-pitying, half-sneer- 
ing contempt upon ignorant, blundering fishermen 
or mechanics, but who, nevertheless, love God and 
souls, and believe in heaven and hell, and who really 
exercise self-denial and take trouble in order to serve 
God and save mem If such men go to prison to 
win some point for God and liberty of conscience, 
these Christians say in their drawing rooms, in their 
magazines and newspapers, " Ah, they are trying to 
become notorious! they are zealous of being thought 
martyrs ! " And thus they join hands, as of old, with 
those who stood around the. cross and wagged their 
heads, and said, " He saved others, Himself he can- 
not save;"' and they can pronounce this judgment 
with such a pious, ex cathedra air that many simple 
men accept it as really the judgment of Christ's 
body on earth, instead of the hollow, sham verdict 
of modern Pharisees. 

In conclusion, let me repeat that if my words 
seem to condemn the great majority of the repre- 
sentatives of Christianity around us, it is with sin- 
cere grief that I admit it. Would to God there 
were few localities, few churches, and few ministers 
to which my remarks could be applied ! But if 
there be not few but many, I cannot help it. I ap- 
peal to yon whether I have spoken more than the 
truth; and I speak it in love to you who wish to 
hear and to obey it in the love of it. I would gladly 
forbear to speak out thus, — I have forborne for long, 



ITS SHAM JUDGMENT. 



151 



and have frequently felt condemned in so doing, 
and it is only because I see the utter hopelessness of 
any improvement, of any recurrence to the simplici- 
ty and purity of the gospel, without an utter aban- 
donment of the false and hollow judgment of 
modern Christianity with respect to the matters we 
have been reviewing, that I venture to speak thus. 
I would fain hope that some of you may be induced 
to forsake every refuge of lies which has been reared 
around you, and to abandon all the false standards 
of faith and practice to which I have alluded, and 
open your hearts and ears to listen to the voice that 
never changes, but which in all ages alike tells men 
of a just judgment to come. We must all appear be- 
fore the judgment-seat of Christ ; and it will be no ex- 
cuse for us there that we were surrounded by false 
witnesses, sham lights, and an openly received system 
of hypocrisy. God lias shown us His beloved Moses, 
Daniels, Nehemiahs, Jeremiahs, Pauls, Johns, and 
numberless other worthies, standing out gloriously 
alone in the midst of a Pagan society, full of refined 
and splendid iniquity, and standing out ever more 
Divine, when all around were " weighed in the bal- 
ances and found wanting." You have but the old 
choice to make; may God enable you to make it, 
and to stand out for God and righteousness against 
all around you. 

THE JUDGMENT OF THE GEEAT W^HITE THEOXE. 

As we remarked in the first part of this lecture, 
the innate convictions of humanity are too strong for 



152 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



the successful annihilation of a dread of corning judg- 
ment. ' It seems to have been the universal opinion 
of the wisest and best of the human race that there 
ought to be a judgment, The continual miscarriage 
of justice in this world, and the unequal distribution 
of its goods and enjoyments ; its false standard of 
right and wrong; its unjust and sham judgments, to 
which we have already alluded, have seemed to drive 
it in upon the reason of all thoughtful beings that 
there must come a settling day. 

The unavenged wrongs of multitudes of the poor 
and the oppressed; of millions of slaves; of poor, 
helpless children ; of tens of thousands of poor, brok- 
en hearted girls, — mere children. — -who have been 
wrecked of virtue and happiness through the vice of 
those double or treble their ao;e, and who were fully 
awake to the consequences of their conduct; — 
wrongs such as these, and multitudes of others, all 
unjudged and unrequited in this world, seem to de- 
mand some future retribution. The unpunished 
sins of multitudes who have flourished in their lives 
and gone in triumph to their graves, who floated to 
their positions of eminence, fame, and luxury through 
the tears and blood of widows, orphans, and others, 
down-trodden by their greed and power, cry from 
the ground, as did the blood of Abel, for avenging 
justice. 

Methinks if we could face this guilty crowd and 
compel them to speak, they would be obliged to 
say, " Yes, during our lives we violated all law and 
justice, won the applause of men and the pleasures 



ITS SHAM JUDGMENT. 



153 



and honors in which we revelled, by means of the 
sorrows and sufferings of our fellows ; but no strong 
arm stayed our progress, no tongue denounced our 
villainies, no power punished our crimes; we lived 
and fattened, and died with the approbation, nay, 
applause, of men ringing in our ears ; and after death 
we were praised and flattered on tablets of marble, 
in newspapers and biographies, as though we had 
been the excellent of the earth. We know that we 
are of the devil; we expect and are waiting for the 
judgment." 

Further, the common-sense of humanity perceives 
that human lives are all unfinished at the grave, and 
require some appendix, some explanation. If you 
found a book with the story all unfinished, — the vil- 
lains and seducers all unpunished, and the poor, 
down-trodden slaves unavenged, the wronged and 
helpless people undelivered, — you would feel that 
there must be another volume somewhere. So, when 
life breaks up, with almost all men there are so 
many things and doings and feelings all unfinished, 
that you might write on every grave-stone, " To be 
continued in the next world." It is as if the tree 
were blighted at its bloom ; as if the life were sap- 
ped at its source ; as if the flood were turned back 
at its tide. 

But, as we have already noted, there is a judgment 
already begun here and now. The same Divinity is 
at work in this world who will reign and operate in 
the next, and He is working on precisely the same 
principles. The moral government of this world is 



154 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



going on under the shadow, so to speak, of the 
great white throne. The shadow of that tribunal is 
reflected on all the tribunals and transactions of 
this earth. 

Formerly, when the judges visited the provincial 
towns, there used to be a sort of public entry. The 
legal civic dignitaries went forth to meet them and 
march in procession with them into the town, pre- 
ceded by heralds with trumpets, announcing the 
coming of judgment for the wrong-doers of those 
towns. So God has His heralds abroad in the world, 
proclaiming that He is coming. These heralds are 
already gone forth ; they are here today. 

There is a herald in every man's heart, giving 
"foretastes of what the judgment will be, pointing 
out and convicting him of sin. 

Every transgressor of the Divine law stands con- 
demned before his own judgment seat. Conscience 
pronounces sentence on him according to his works, 
independently of all creeds and theories. A false 
gospel, under the auspices of popular Christianity, 
essays to set at nought this judgment, and to tell 
men that they are not to judge themselves accord- 
ing to their works, but according to their beliefs. 
But God's herald in. them remorselessly holds up 
their sin, and points to coming retribution. Con- 
science asserts itself, and the man who has sinned 
knows, feels that he must be judged. 

Further, not only does conscience convict of sin, 
but to a certain extent punishes sin, even here. 
What horrors men suffer from their guilty con- 



ITS SHAM JUD'rMEXT. 



155 



sciences, in spite of all their infidel reasonings and 
hopes. How many suicides will be found, like 
Judas, to have been driven to distraction by the 
remorse and anguish of realized guilt. Is not the 
fact that such suffering is the consequence of sin 
unquestionable evidence that so long as the soul 
continues to live and remain guilty, it must contin- 
ue to suffer? If transgressors can find no comfort 
or deliverance from this tormenting sense of guilt 
in this world, on what principle can it be argued 
that they will find it in the next? If conscience is 
too strong for them here, what ground is there for 
supposing that they will rise superior to it in 
the future ? 

Secondly : God has a herald in society. We have 
wandered a long distance from God in these days, 
I admit, and as distance from the sun brings corre- 
sponding darkness and obliterates the distinctions 
between natural objects, so distance from God 
brings spiritual darkness and induces blindness to 
moral distinctions. Nevertheless, far as society has 
got away from God, and rotten as it largely is, still 
it has the herald trumpet blowing loudly enough to 
proclaim evil to be evil, and, being evil, to be amen- 
able to judgment. And although many preachers 
of a false theology, under the patronage of popular 
Christianity, combine to persuade men and them- 
selves that they will escape punishment, the very 
libertines, thieves, gamblers, and moral bankrupts 
of all descriptions, pronounce their judgment to be 
false, saying, ''Hypocrites all of you, we know we 



156 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY, 



are of the devil ; his works we do, and we expect to 
go to hell." 

I have no doubt that the great secret of the suc- 
cess of the Salvation Army with multitudes of the 
openly wicked and profane is that we go straight to 
their consciences, attacking their sins, making no 
excuse or palliation, but telling them as straight as 
Jesus Christ Himself told the sinners of His day, 
that, except they repent, forsake their sins, and 
turn to God, everlasting fire must be their portion. 
This gospel answers to the voice of conscience with- 
in ; they know it is true, because it matches their 
most secret and powerful intuitions, whereas the 
popular gospel of this day, its judgment included, is 
the laughing-stock of hell ; it dare neither damn the 
sinner nor sanctify the saint. 

But we must now consider for a few minutes 
what the character of this judgment is to be, which 
is proclaimed alike by conscience, reason, and re- 
ligion. And the bible, after all, is the great author- 
ity. It meets us just where conscience and reason 
fail us, and responds to and corroborates the pro- 
founclest and most indestructible intuitions of hu- 
manity. 

Here the bible comes forward and proclaims the 
fact of a coming judgment in the most emphatic and 
unmistakable language, and describes the principles 
on which it is to be conducted, and the consequences 
which are to follow from it, with the utmost 
minuteness. I have avoided quoting texts more 
than I could help in former lectures, mainly because 



ITS SHAM JUDGMENT. 



157 



the number corroborative of each of my points 
would have been so overwhelming; but I must nec- 
essarily quote three or four passages here, and 
shall take th.em from the words of Jesus, Paul, 
Peter, Jude, and John, that in the mouth of three 
or four witnesses this truth may be established. 

" The hour is coming, in which all that are in the 
graves shall hear the voice of the Son of Man, and 
shall come forth ; they that have done good, unto 
the resurrection of life ; and they that have done 
evil, unto the resurrection of damnation " (John v. 
28, 29). 

"The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven 
with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking ven- 
geance on them that know not God, and that obey 
not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ : who shall 
be punished with everlasting destruction from the 
presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His 
power" (2 Thess. i. 7-9). 

"For we must all appear before the judgment 
seat of Christ : that evervone may receive the things 
done in his body, according to that he hath done, 
whether it be good or bad " (2 Cor. v. 10). 

"But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in 
the night ; in the which the heavens shall pass away 
with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with 
fervent heat, the earth also and the worts that are 
therein shall be burned up " (2 Peter iii. 10). 

"And the angels which kept not their first estate, 
but left their own habitation, He hath reserved in 
everlasting chains under darkness unto the judg- 
ment of the great day " (Jude 6), 



158 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



" And I saw a great white throne, and Him that 
sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven 
fled away; and there was found no place for them. 
And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before 
God; and the books were opened: and another 
book was opened, which is the book of life : and the 
dead were judged out of those things which were 
written in the books, according to their works" 
(Rev. xx. 11, 12). 

I accept that authority. That answers to the 
voice of my conscience. That satisfies the claims of 
my intellect. Here I perceive that God will avenge 
the wrongs, not only of His own elect, but of the 
fatherless, the widow, and the oppressed of all ages, 
and the cry of my soul for justice is met, my sense 
of outraged righteousness is appeased, my conscience 
pronounces, " True and righteous art Thou, O King 
of saints ! " 

But people say, and a great many Christian peo- 
ple say in this day, "A good deal of the language in 
these and similar texts is figurative language." 
They do not like the doctrine ; it is too definite, too 
particular, too inclusive for them ; and so they try 
to explain it away. But supposing that some of the 
language were figurative, — what then? What do 
you gain by making it out to be figurative ? What 
are figures for ? Surely no one will argue that the 
judgment, as prefigured in the words of Jesus Christ 
and His apostles, will be less thorough, less scrutin- 
izing, less terrible than the figures used to set it 
forth ! Therefor it does not matter whether these 



ITS SHAM JUDGMENT. 



159 



be figurative expressions or no. seeing that they are 
calculated to convey the most awful and tremen- 
dous ideas of the judgment which any figures could 
convey, which the wisdom of God could select. 

Some of the objections which people bring against 
the literal fulfillment of these passages seem to me to 
be very weak. 

They say, " Where could be the scene of such a 
judgment seat!" I answer,. He who created the 
universe can surely make a platform big enough on 
which to judge the inhabitants of this little world. 
For aught we know, there may be one already erect- 
ed. There may be a world of judgment going on, 
where the representatives of the Divine government 
are already at work, getting ready for the final 
sentence. We do not know. 

Again, they say, "Look at the time it would re- 
quire." But I say, He who has had patience to 
watch the long procession of man's iniquities through 
the ages of time will perhaps have patience to judge 
men on account of them ! And as one day is with 
the Lord as a thousand years, be sure, sinner, He 
will take the time to investigate your case: you will 
not be missed out. 

Xote that the judgment is to be universal. 

These passages and numberless others declare that 
the dead, small and great, shall stand before God, 
and that every knee shall bow before Him, and every 
tongue confess to Him. If God in some way will 
deal individually with every son and daughter of 
Adam, what does it signify where or by what method 



160 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



He does it, so that the end be secured ? You and I 
will find our way from the spot, wherever it may be, 
to heaven or to hell, according to the sentence. 
Our destiny in the great eternity which follows will 
be settled by the sentence, not by the method by 
which it is arrived at. The great matter to us is 
that "we must all appear before the judgment seat 
of Christ, that every one may receive the things done 
in his body, according to that he hath done, whether 
it be good or bad." This is not the Old Testa- 
ment. I have purposely confined my quotations to 
the New; this is the revelation of the gospel of Jesus 
Christ, by which Paul declares God will " judge the 
secrets of men." 

Not only will every man and woman be dealt with, 
but every character will be demonstrated, made 
manifest. 

There will be no whited sepulchre business there, 
no make-believe, sentimental salvation, no false gos- 
pel, with its creeds and phrases, no ceremonial salva- 
tion; but we shall all stand revealed as we are, black 
or white, good or bad, washed or unwashed, pure or 
impure. 

What nonsense it is for people to talk of going 
down to death with their hearts full of iniquity, — ■ 
"as a cage of unclean birds," as some of them are so 
fond of quoting. If so, what effect will death have 
upon their moral nature? What cleansing stream 
will be opened by the Angel of Death ? If you are 
not saved from sin before you come down to the 
Jordan of death, there is no virtue in its waters to 



ITS SHAM JUDGMENT. 



161 



wash you. There is only one cleansing medium for 
souls, and that is the blood of the Lamb ; and you 
must get washed in life, if you want to pass muster 
at death and at the judgment seat. 

People say, " Do you think the sins of the saints 
are going to be dragged out at the judgment seat?" 
No ! not the sins of the saints, for they are cast 
behind His back; but the saints themselves are 
going to be dragged out. One great end of the 
judgment will be to decide who are the saints^ and to 
show to the universe that Jesus was equal to the 
work He had undertaken, namely, to destroy in the 
hearts of His saints the works of the devil, and that 
He was strong enough to hold them up against all 
the temptations and allurements of sin, blameless 
unto that day ; and now they are to be revealed and 
held up, not as dark, hollow, evil-hearted, hypocriti- 
cal people, but as the saints of God, washed and 
saved and made clean and white, which you know 
means holy, in the blood of the Lamb. He will 
point all the devils in the universe to His saints ; 
they will be His boast and glory, and manifest vic- 
tory over the devil. The question of questions then 
will be, Are you a saint? 

Further, every character is not only to be settled 
and demonstrated, but it is to be judged according 
to its deserts — "according to that he hath done" 

He that knew his Master's will and did it not, is 
to be beaten with many stripes ; while he who knew 
it not and did things worthy of stripes, is to beaten 
with few. "And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted 
unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell," 



162 



POPULAR CHBISTIAXITT. 



We shall be judged according to our privileges, 
according to the light we have received, and the 
obedience we have rendered to it, not only outward- 
ly, but inwardly; according to our rebellion or sub- 
mission to God: according to our loyalty and 
obedience to Him, in our hearts as well as in our 
lives. 

I am afraid many, even of those who are saved, 
will suffer great loss in that day. There will be a 
great deal of wood, hay, and stubble, instead of gold, 
silver, and precious stones. Oh, let us wake up in 
time to redeem the few remaining days of our lives. 
The past is irredeemable ; it is gone, and its losses 
must remain forever. The harvest which we might 
have gathered is lost, and God Himself cannot make 
up to us for that loss. We may have many to-mor- 

before His judgment seat to receive the things done 
in the body. What are you doing? Are you visit- 
ing His sick or in prison? Are you ministering 
unto Him when hungry or naked, in the persons of 
His poor? When He is east out and traduced in 
the persons of His persecuted ones, are you showing 
your love to Him by standing up for His character 
and doing what you can to defend Him ? Are you 
seeking after His lost sheep diligently until you find 
them, which means, you know, going after them 
where they are, however the thorns may prick your 
feet or the sun light on vour head? Are voudoixg 
these things? because, if not, don't expect Him to 



ITS SHAM JUDGMENT. 



163 



say, " Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least 
of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." 

Can anybody imagine that Jesus Christ will pro- 
nounce a sort of figurative or sentimental judgment — 
that He will say, 44 Inasmuch as ye did this or that" 
to those who never did anything of the kind? Such 
a proceeding would be very unlike anything He 
ever did or said when on earth, would it not? He 
was so true that He was called " the Truth;" so intense- 
ly real and practical that no shadow of unreality or 
sham could endure His gaze for a moment. Is it 
possible to conceive that He will be any other when 
He comes to judgment ? And yet how many of His 
professed followers are presuming on a Judge all 
meekness, mercy, and love, quite forgetting that in 
that day the reign of mercy will be ended and the 
Lamb that was slain will appear as the Lion of the 
tribe of Juclah, the Judge of all the earth, who will 
still do right. 

What are you doing, friend? As the stories come 
to me from Hackney Wick, Seven Dials, St. Giles', 
the Borough, and other parts where our people are 
visiting and working continually, — stories of desti- 
tution, sickness, sorrow, and suffering, no less than 
of sin crime and shame, — I feel, what can I do, 
what can I say that will arouse God's professed peo- 
ple to some concern and care for these poor lost 
multitudes? Our people tell me they find people 
who say, 44 Don't talk to us about a God: Ave don't 
believe in such a Being. Don't tell us about Chris- 
tians : we want neither you nor your tracts, nor your 



164 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



Bibles — away with you. We don't believe in such 
Christians, who leave us to die in want and misery 
like this." Men and women nearly naked, children 
absolutely so, women who must not look off from 
their match-box making, at 2 1-2(7. per gross, or their 
shirt stitching, at 3d. each, for fear of reducing their 
earnings a half-penny, and thus robbing their chil- 
dren of an ounce more bread, or the rent of their 
wretched room of the last fraction which an inexora- 
ble (perhaps Christian?) landlord exacts. Thou- 
sands of such wretched beings, without a bed to lie 
upon, without fire to warm them, or sufficient food 
to keep body and soul together, are living in the 
greatest degradation and sin all over this London, 
perhaps not two hundred yards from the very spot 
where we are assembled this afternoon ; and yet 
who cares for them, or visits them, or weeps over 
them with a really Christ-like sympathy? Who 
carries them either the bread that perisheth or the 
Bread of Life ? You London Christians, what shall 
you say in the great day of account ? Where shall 
you stand? How will you look? Oh, friends, give 
up the sentimental hypocrisy of singing, — 

"Eescue the perishing, 
Care for the dying," — 

in the drawing room, to the accompaniment of the 
piano, without ever dreaming of going outside to do 
it ; such idle words will prove only a mockery and 
a sham in the great day of account. Such songs 
will come booming back on the ears of the soul with 
more awful forebodings than the echoes of the 



ITS SHAM JUDGMENT. 



165 



Archangel's trumpet itself! Sentimentalism will 
have no resurrection; it will rot with the grave 
clothes ! What cloth it profit, my brethren, to say 
to the hungry and naked, either physically or spirit- 
ually, Be ye warmed and filled, if, notwithstanding, 
ye give them not either the temporal or the spiritual 
bread? He will say, " Inasmuch as ye did it not, 
depart from Me.'' 

Further, the verdict of that day will carry univer- 
sal conviction. 

Every being will feel that long-waited-for justice 
has come at last. The song which will burst forth 
from the lips of the saints, as they take their places 
in the celestial city, will be, " True and righteous 
art Thou, O King of saints:" and methinks the 
same words, though not uttered by the lips, will be 
graven on the hearts of the hosts of the lost as they 
sink to meet their doom, and the realization of the 
justice of their sentence will make their hell. May 
no soul in this assembly, or any who may read 
these words, ever realize what this means. Amen. 



Notes of Three Addresses ox Household 

Gods. 

delivered ix steixvtay hall, regent street. 

i; Know ye not. that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to 
obey, his servants ye are whom ye obey ; whether of sin unto 
death, or of obedience unto righteousness ?*' (Romans vi. 16). 

It is assumed all through, this Book that every 
human being has a deity. In fact, we are so made 
that we must have a god. Even the man who says 
there is no God, worships a god notwithstanding-, 
and that god is, " to whom he yields himself a ser- 
vant to obey." Xow God claims to be the Deity of 
the soul of every human being ; but Satan has sup- 
planted God, and he has done it in many ways. He 
has assumed many different forms in order to suit 
different classes and conditions of men. For one 
class of persons he finds one idol, for another class 
another. But the principle here laid down is, that 
whatever the outward form may be, that which 
usurps in a man's affections, life, and action, the 
place of Grod z becomes his deity. He need not out- 
wardly label it idol, or bow his knees and worship 
it. The supremacy which he gives to it in his affec- 
tions and life is the point. 

What an awful thought that in this so-called 

166 



HOUSEHOLD GODS. 



167 



Christian England, tens of thousands of people are 
as truly worshipping idols as are any of the inhabit- 
ants of Africa or China. 

I want this morning to confine myself more par- 
ticularly to the gods of the household. Professing 
Christians speak about giving up the vanities of the 
world, and coming out from the world, when, alas! we 
need not go outside the four walls of their own 
dwellings to find their god. I am afraid there are 
quite as many people who go wrong with these 
inside idols^ as with the outside ones. 

The first that strikes us as the most universal god 
of so-called religious society in this day is the 

GOD OF FASHION. 

Now, what is fashion? What does the term 
mean? It means the world's way of having things, 
and the world's way of doing things. When we 
look abroad on the great majority of men and wo- 
men around us, we see that they are utterly godless, 
selfish, and untrue, and yet the majority always 
fixes the fashion. It is not the few true, real, God- 
fearing, earnest men and women who want to serve 
God and help humanity, who fix the fashion ; it is 
always the majority. Consequently, you see, fashion 
is always diametrically opposed to God's way of 
having things, and God's way of doing things. 
Therefore the votaries of fashion cannot possibly be 
the servants of God! There is no getting away 
from that conclusion. 

Let us now inquire what is God's great end or 



168 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



purpose in His way of doing things, and in the way 
that He has prescribed in which we are to have and 
to do things. What is shown by the constitution of 
our bodies, by the laws and ordinances of the heavens, 
and by the laws of nature, to be God's end in 
everything ? Utility ! If you look at your eye, or 
study your ear or hands, or any other part of your 
body, you cannot find a single fibre or nerve which 
is not of some use in your animal economy — nothing 
superfluous, nothing for waste or for mere sake of 
being there. A useful result is the end contempla- 
ted. Look at the heavens — it is the same ; there is 
not a single waste star. Look at the animal creation 
— it is the same. Look at the vegetable creation — 
it is the same. The very rocks exist not for them- 
selves. The earth ministers to the wants of man 
and beast. There is nothing created for mere show, 
no useless part of creation. The aim of God in all 
His modes and works is the highest good to all His 
creatures. Now let us inquire what is the end of 
fashion. When we substitute the means for the end, 
we lose the great result God had in store for us. 
This is true in everything, natural, mental, and 
spiritual. Now, God's order is to have everything 
attuned to the highest result, especially in the case 
of His highest creature — man. He wants us to use 
every power and capacity He has given us for the 
highest ends — to serve God and humanity ! But 
fashion has turned God's order topsy-turvy, and set 
up as its end, supposed Beauty ! not that beauty 
which is an accompaniment of utility ; but fashion 



HOUSEHOLD GODS. 



169 



sets up beauty as the end, and not the accompani- 
ment. Fashion says, " That is elegant. That looks 
grand, so it shall be so." So the great question 
comes to be in dress, in equipage, in our modes of 
doing business, in our furnishing arrangements, and 
in our institutions, What is the order of fashion? 
Fashion sets the law, and everybody does what 
everybody else does ; and all who will not bow down 
to this idol are called puritans, fanatics, straight-laced, 
or by any other terms of contempt most convenient. 
So hot is this furnace of contempt and scorn that 
it is one of the highest tests of moral courage in 
man or woman to set fashion at naught. It is one 
of the grandest things to teach your children from 
their babyhood to say, " No, I won't do that because 
everybody else does it. You must give me a better 
reason than the fashion for what I do." 

Fashion prescribes the form of dress for almost 
the whole world. Doctors may talk, and advise, 
and warn against high heels, tight waists, and in- 
sufficient clothing, and all the monstrous and ridic- 
ulous appendages to dress which fashion from time 
to time prescribes. But it is fashion ! that is enough. 
Never mind if tight-lacing does squeeze my lungs 
and prevent my getting the necessary amount of air, 
thus inducing premature disease and death; it is 
the fashion, and I must do it. Never mind if the 
high-heeled shoes produce deformity of the spine 
and all manner of other injuries ; it is the fashion, 
and I must have them. I must dress myself in the 
most ridiculous costumes which Parisian milliners 



170 



P OP ULA R CHRIS TIAXITY. 



can contrive, it is the fashion ; if the dress is too 
light, or does not half cover my body, never mind; 
I shall wear it because it is the fashion. 

So, in the furnishing of people's houses, in a great 
many instances, it is the same. I have been in 
many houses where it seems to me that almost all 
utility and necessary comfort for health and work 
is lost sight of. It is almost all show, so that you 
are afraid to use a table for fear you will injure it. 
Oh, the money and time that are squandered, and 
the perpetual strife that goes on to keep up this 
show because everybody else does it. 

In their very companionships fashion has decided 
what should be the ground and the rule of selection, 
and so fashionable people have only the companions 
that society has settled they are to have. They do 
not look, as you would suppose rational beings 
would, for congenial society in the way of congeni- 
ality of thought, and feeling, and intelligence, that 
which gives vivacity and interest to communion 
with one another. Oh, no ! If a person ever so 
attractive and clever, and competent to interest,- or 
instruct, or please them, happens to be a grade lower 
in the social scale, fashion says, " That person is 
not in your circle, he is out of your sphere ; you 
cannot associate with such a person." So they de- 
prive their intellects and hearts of the greatest de- 
light, because fashion has prescribed what kind of 
people they should associate with, and if those peo- 
ple be ever so hollow and empty, never mind ; they 
must obey the behests of fashion. 



HOUSEHOLD GODS. 



Ill 



Fashion lias also settled that it is not the thing 
for people in certain positions and stations to go to 
such and such places, but that it is right for them to 
go to others ; and so they go wherever fashion dic- 
tates. Fashion has even prescribed the way people 
shall move and the way in which they shall speak, 
and has got them pretty much squeezed down into 
uniformity, so that all naturalness is lost and they 
are nearly all alike. It is the same kind of move- 
ment they make and the same kind of platitudes 
they litter, everywhere and in all circumstances. 
I hope there are not many of this class here this 
morning ; but if there are any, let me ask, How do 
you like the picture — the representation of the 
claims of this deity? — that rational beings, intelli- 
gent creatures, some of them capable of great and 
glorious things, should be thus fettered and bound 
and forced into one shape and reduced to nonenti- 
ties and puppets ? 

Do you envy the fate of the devotees of fashion ? 
Will you worship this god any longer ? Thank God, 
He emancipated me twenty-five years ago, and I 
have been free ever since. If you are not yet eman- 
cipated, get emancipated this morning. 

Do not consider fashion when you are settling how 
you ought to order your household, but plan for the 
highest good of your children and those around you, 
and for your greatest usefulness in the world. Never 
mind fashion. 

In this day when chaplains of prisons and reforma- 
tories tell us that gaudy, flashy dressing leads as 



172 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



many young girls to destruction as drink, it behoves 
every true woman to settle before God in her closet 
what kind of dress she ought to wear, and to resolve 
to wear it in spite of fashion. If all professedly- 
Christian ladies would do this, what a salvation this 
one reform alone would work in the world ! You 
young people here resolve that you will be original, 
natural human beings, as God would have you ; re- 
solve that you won't be pressed into this mould, or 
into that, to please anybody — that you will be an in- 
dependent man or woman, educated and refined by 
intercourse with God ; but be yourself \ and do not 
aim to be anybody else. Set fashion at naught. If 
people would do this, what different households they 
would have ! What different children ! What 
different friends ! What different results they would 
produce in the world, and how differently they 
would feel when they were dying! Oh, what wast- 
ed lives ! What beautiful forms, and beautiful 
minds, and beautiful intellects are prostrated and ru- 
ined at the shrine of the god of fashion ! May God 
deliver us from this idol ! 

Another of the most prominent of household gods 
is that of ease — comfort. In many instances the 
highest interests of the children and servants, the 
the good of the bodies and souls of men, the serv- 
ing and glory of God, are all made subservient to 
this god of comfort. 

Think for a moment what God requires of every 
human being. First, He requires all men to be His 
people ; and secondly, He requires of all His people 
that they should be absolutely his servants. 



HOUSEHOLD GODS. 



173 



Now then, compare the duties of a servant with 
the idea of ease and comfort being the prevailing 
notion of a man's life, and you will see its absurdi- 
ty. What would you think of a servant, whose 
prevailing idea was to make her or himself comfort- 
able ? Suppose such a one saying, " Yes, I want 
the situation, I should like the wages, but I want 
my comfort most. I do not want to get up any 
earlier in the morning than the mistress or the mas- 
ter. I am not going to do any hard or troublesome 
work. I don't see why I should. I should like an 
easy chair to sit in, and certain hours of the day to 
myself. I am not going to do this or the other that 
is disagreeable to me. I am going to be comfort- 
able." What would you think of such a servant ? 

You smile ; well, if we are true and real, we have 
given up the ownership of ourselves. We have 
become literally the slaves of the living God, to do 
His bidding, to work for His interests, to look after 
His lost ones, to extend His kingdom, and to live 
for His glory ! This is what we profess. This is 
not The Salvation Army theology only. This is in 
all Church creeds, more or less. It was sworn over 
your baptismal font that you should renounce the 
devil and all his works, that you should give up 
" the world " and be a true and real servant of the 
Most High God. And yet I am afraid many in this 
congregation have taken good care never to serve 
God at the expense of their own comfort/ If you 
suggest any plan of usefulness, the first thing that 
meets you in one form or another is, " Oh, that 



174 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



would be hard work : that would be a sacrifice ; or, 
I should have to give up so many evenings a week; " 
or sometimes, alas, " that would interfere with 
my dinner hour." 

These ease-loving Christians, do not look at the 
object that has to be accomplished for God; bur how 
it will effect their own ease and comfort. " I visit 
the poor ! Oh, I could not ; think of the smells I 
should have to encounter ; look at the disagreeable 
sights I should have to see ! My delicate nerves 
would not bear it. Oh, no, I could not. If the 
Lord has any nice comfortable work, I have no ob- 
jection; but my comfort must first be considered. 
Your mission services are all very good, but we can- 
not have our household duties upset. We must 
have our domestic regularity — our comfort." I 
have wept many times as I have parted with such 
people, when these words forced themselves upon 
me : " Saul returned into his own house, but David 
gat him into the hold." 

David must go and fight and face the perils of the 
wilderness, and endure all sorts of self-sacrifice, and 
conflict, and sorrow, but Saul goes back to his own 
house. He has done with it. He thinks his re- 
sponsibility is at an end. When the meeting is over, 
these people who have heard all about the claims of 
God and the lost, and perhaps said a few sleepy 
words of sympathy, or given a five-pound note, away 
they go to their own houses ; but the real Davids 
must get up into the holds, or else God's armies will 
be wasted, and hell will be more largely peopled 



HOUSEHOLD GODS. 



175 



than it would be otherwise. Somebody must hold 
the fort, somebody must fight, somebody must suffer. 
Nothing can be done for humanity but through 
suffering, and if one won't, there falls a double 
weight upon another. Oh, the multitudes of souls 
who have made shipwreck through this god of 
ease ! It ruins the soul that worships, as well as 
hinders all the good that might be done for others. 
It has a stupefying, paralysing, damning influence 
upon every soul that once gives way to it. 

Once get under the dominion of that GOD and 
you are done for. If you are under his dominion, 
for Christ's sake get up this morning and ask Him 
to snap the fetters that bind you. Jesus from the 
Cross cries to you. Suffering humanity is sinking 
at this hour by thousands into a hell on earth, and 
a nethermost hell hereafter. Up, Christians, arise 
and be doing ! Put off your sleepiness, your idleness, 
and set to work; bend your back to the burden, 
stoop to pick up the lost. They are crying all 
around you for help. 

If I understand this book, you will be called to 
an awful account if your opportunity, your strength 
of body, your capacities for blessing your fellow-men 
are all buried and destroyed by this love of ease. 

Thank God, He emancipated me from that years 
ago. I have had the same temptations that others 
have had, and perhaps sometimes even extra temp- 
tations, through excessive weariness, frequently 
hardly knowing how to get from my bed; but I 
have had such a horror of getting under the domin- 



176 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



ion of this god of ease that I have set my whole 
nature against it. 

What would you think of a mother whose child 
was dangerously sick saying, " Really, I am so bur- 
dened with the rest of my family, I have so much to 
think about, that I cannot give myself up to this 
child. I am very sorry, of course, I feel it very 
deeply, but I cannot deny myself the comforts of life. 
I must lie on the sofa so long, and I must do this, 
that, or the other, or go here and there ? " What 
would you think of such a woman? And yet there 
are thousands of professing Christians who lie on 
the sofa, I am afraid, half their time. They don't 
know what to do with themselves, trying to get 
amused and occupied, and yet they profess to be 
God Almighty's servants. 

My friends, put this practical test to yourselves. 
It is of no use going to services and hearing beauti- 
ful sermons which you don't apply to yourselves. 
Are not these things realities? If so, I say, for 
Christ's sake, for your soul's sake, and humanity's 
sake, act accordingly. 

Another household god — alas ! I wish it could be 
kept out of the household (for it is more especially 
the god of the world outside, yet it comes into the 
family and gets into the hearts of the very little 
ones) — 

THE GOD OF GAIN. 

Now God's order is for every man to look after 
his fellow man — " look not every man on his own 
things, but also on the things of others," but the 



HOUSEHOLD GODS. 



177 



world's order — its received maxim is — " Every man 
for himself." God's order is, "As ye would men 
should do to you, do ye even so to them." That 
means, you know, when you are making a bargain, 
don't run a man down below the lawful price of his 
goods, any more than you would like to have him 
run you down. Don't beat down that poor woman 
in her work because you know she has no one to ap- 
peal to. That is the spirit of selfishness, which is 
of the devil. 

This god of gain ! how I see its sway some- 
times in houses where I stay. What a contrast I 
often see between the interest excited by the news 
of the day, and any information respecting the king- 
dom of God. You know how morning prayers are 
got over very often — how superficial it all is, how 
little heart there is in it. It seems quite a relief to 
the worshippers when it is over ; then begins the 
real interest of the day. The gentleman seizes the 
newspaper, looks up and down the columns to see 
how the funds stand. If you keep looking at him 
you will tell in a minute if there is anything in the 
paper that touches him. If he is a merchant the 
state of the market as to the things he buys or sells 
touches him to the quick ; if he sees something af- 
fecting his interests he will perhaps tell it to his 
wife, and then you will see the older children look- 
ing towards him with the greatest anxiety — the god 
of gain has his hand even on their young hearts. 
They may have some outward show of being religi- 
ous, but gain is the real god. If there is anything 



178 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



that entails immediate action in connection with the 
business, you see how everything else is at once put 
on one side. Then the lady says, " Business must 
be attended to." Must is a sine qua non in the mat- 
ter. • Would to God they would put a must in some- 
where else. The children all know the importance 
of that must. They know, perhaps, that they have 
money, that they are- to be rich some day, but 
nevertheless they want more. Their father cannot 
afford to lose if he has ever so much. Gain, gain — 
they must make gain ! That man may see in an- 
other column of the paper something which affects 
the work of God, but he only says a few sleepy 
words about it, "Very sorry, very sorry indeed." 
Then down goes the paper, and he gets ready to go 
to his office. The column touching his gains touched 
him to the quick, the other only touched his senti- 
mentality ; the one touched his interests, the other 
touched only those of Jesus Christ. 

Once I was at a conference, and I shall never for- 
get it. I saw a company of ministers deliberating 
on certain questions, and the questions were all on 
paper, so that everybody knew what was coming on. 
I noticed that when anything came up affecting the 
character, or position, or income of those individuals, 
every man was in his place, every man had his 
paper and pencil quick as lightning, to catch every 
word that was said. But when it was a question 
that only referred to the work of God, to the inter- 
ests of the Church, to the salvation of souls, a 
number of them were out of their places altogether. 



HOUSEHOLD GODS. 



179 



Others had got the newspapers, others were writing 
letters. There was only a handful who were paying 
proper attention to the question. I thought, O my 
God, it is as it was in the days of old, " there is not 
one of them that will keep Thy doors for naught ; 
they are all gone after their covetousness." 
Don't call that censorious. You know how true it is. 
I wish it w^eee not. I feel as if I could give the 
blood out of my very heart that it might not be so, 
but it is so. I have no doubt the Apostle was 
forced much against his will to say and feel — " For 
all seek their own, not the things which, are 
Jesus Christ's." Alas ! it had begun to be true then; 
how much more true is it now? I trust and believe 
that God is raising up a people who will seek His, 
in their very hearts' core, and who will be willing 
to sacrifice their own gain ! 

" The love of money is the root of all evil." Hu- 
man experience justifies the Divine Word. Show me 
a man who loves money for its own sake, for the 
sake of hoarding it and leaving it to his children, 
and I will show you a man whom the devil is sure 
of. There is no doubt about it, unless God in His 
omnipotent mercy awakens him and gives him grace 
to turn that devil of avarice out of his soul — "Cov- 
etousness, which is idolatry " — idol worship ! gold 
worship ! wealth worship ! ! 

Are you worshipping this god? My friend, make 
haste for your life. You can no more be the Lord's 
servant and worship wealth, than the Jews were 
who crucified the Lord Jesus. 



i 



180 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



Friends, go to your closets ; see whether you are 
in any measure under the dominion of this idol of 
gain ! see why you value your money ; see what you 
purpose to do with it ; reckon, if you had a husband, 
a wife, or child in slavery, and you could buy them 
out, how much of the money you would keep. 
Reckon what you ought to keep while thousands of 
your brethren are the slaves of sin and the clevil, 
when jouv money would help to deliver them. 
Eeckon this matter as you would reckon with your 
steward. 

You give your steward possession of certain prop- 
erty to manage for you; ydu know that he must 
eat and drink, and have a place to rest in. If he is 
a good servant, you say, " Here, John, I want you 
to accomplish that work for me in so many months, 
and I place at your disposal these resources. Get 
in these debts, see these creditors, receive such and 
such moneys, do such and such things. You may 
take out all that is necessary to keep you in comfort 
and health (and if he has a family), as much as 
your family requires, not for extravagance, but for 
your necessary comfort, while you are doing my 
business." Would you reckon that such a steward 
had a right to spend your money in extravagant 
living, or hoard it up for his own personal ends? 
Are you a steward of God? And do you expect to 
give an account to Him who shall judge both quick 
and dead? If so, what will you say when He de- 
mands an account of 3'our stewardship ? 

The household god next in importance, and 



HOUSEHOLD GOBS. 



181 



which is perhaps the most popular both of the house- 
hold and the nation, is the 

GOD OF EDUCATION. 

Everything must bow to the scholastic education 
of the children. Their very health is sacrificed in 
hundreds of instances ; the whole of the domestic 
arrangements, the convenience of father and mother 
and visitors must bow down to this god. The chil- 
dren must be educated, whatever else becomes of 
them. I touched very briefly on this subject in my 
address at Exeter Hall on "Family Religion," and 
some friends seemed to infer that I was against ed- 
ucation, whereas I have seldom talked with any one 
on the subject more profoundly impressed with its 
importance ! I adopted, many years ago, the senti- 
ment of the philosopher Locke, who said that "in 
nine cases out of ten all the men we meet are what 
they are for good or for evil, for usefulness or other- 
wise, by their education." I say I fully believe that, 
and have acted upon it in training my own family; 
so you see my quarrel is not with education, but 
with a certain hind of education. 

I believe that a child ought to be educated every 
half-hour of its life — never ought to be left to itself 
in the sense of not having a recognized influence 
exerted over its mind. The question is then, What 
kind of education is the right kind to bestow upon 
children ? How ought you to educate them ? The 
same idea which helped us on the question of fashion 
may help us again here. What should be the great 



182 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



purpose of education? Surely right education 
must be that which is calculated to help the child 
to attain the highest type of its kind, and to fit it for 
its highest destiny, You train your horse on that 
principle. You develop and stengthen it that it 
may be a perfect creature, having capacity devel- 
oped for the highest service of which its nature is 
capable. I say that all right training ought to con- 
template this end, and especially with respect to 
man, God's highest creature. Next comes the ques- 
tion, What is the highest type of a man? and the 
highest destiny of a man? What ought we to aim 
at ? For if the aim is wrong, all our training will be 
wrong. I say that the highest type of a man is 
that in which the soul rules over the body, in which 
a purified, ennobled soul rules through an enlight- 
ened intelligence, and makes every faculty of the 
being subservient to the highest purpose, the service 
of humanity and the service of God ! If I under- 
stand it, that is the highest type of man and his 
highest destiny. And it seems to me that all educa- 
tion that falls short of this is a curse rather than a 
blessing, 

The aim of all rightly directed education is to 
make such men and women, and to fit them for such 
work, and if it fails of this, I say it is one-sided, un- 
philosophical, and irreligious, and that is my quar- 
rel with modern education. I charge it with 
being all this, and that is the reason I did not edu- 
cate my children after its theories ; I did not believe 
in them, and the results so far prove that I was 
right. 



HOUSEHOLD GODS. 



183 



Then first let me look at what ought to be the 
purpose of education. Most of you, nearly all, I 
presume, agree as to what I have stated. But the 
purpose of modern education is anything but this 
It is for the most part planned and executed with a 
view to the aggrandizement or well-being of the in- 
dividual, looked at in a worldly point of view. 
Parents look at their boy and say, 64 ISTow, what can 
we do with him ? " They have all sorts of aspira- 
tions and ambitions for the boy, and they say, 
"Well, we must educate him, develop his intellect." 
What for? That he may use it for the service of 
humanity and the glory of God? Oh no, that never 
enters their minds. They say, " We will have him 
educated in order that he may shine in the world. 
We will have a son who will be able to go to the 
bar, the senate house, or do anything else that ambi- 
tion fixes on." The aggbaxdizemext of the indi- 
vidual is the end, not the universal good, and out 
of this wrong aim arises the undue estimate of mere 
scholastic education. What would you say of the 
training of an animal, if it were possible for the 
trainer to select one or two faculties, and develop 
and strengthen them to the exclusion, neglect, or 
.extinction of other faculties ? Would you say that 
was right training? 

The main idea of modern education is that of the 
imparting of knowledge. Knowledge is the idol 
which both the household and the nation to-day are 
worshipping more largely perhaps than any other, 
as if progress in knowledge constituted the true 



184 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



progress of man. Oh, if it were so, what a different 
world we should have to-day ; but we know it is quite 
the contrary. We know that the more knowledge 
you give to an individual, without giving him a cor- 
responding disposition to use it for good, the more 
you increase his capacity for mischief. Very often 
the most learned men live for the worst purposes ! 
But, alas, ! the very flower of the youth of our nation 
is sacrificed to this modern deity. The notion is 
that our youth must be educated in this mischiev- 
ous sense ; they must be crammed with knowledge ; 
whether it be a curse or a blessing to them is not 
the question, but tliey must have it. They must learn 
the dead languages, and read bad literature, in order 
to make them like the rest of the world around 
them, no matter what becomes of their morals ; they 
must be crammed with science, — much of it falsely 
so called; much of it in embryo, crude and shallow — 
the shallow theories of minds trying to grasp pro- 
found thoughts, and getting lost in the fogs of their 
own folly, landing the poor pupils on the strand of 
infidelity and atheism. The intellect, the one facul- 
ty of the man, must be strained, and stretched, and 
crammed, to the utter neglect, and often destruction, 
of the moral faculties. And when you have done, 
what have you produced ? An enlightened animal, 
an intellectual monster, who walks abroad, treading 
under his feet all the tender instincts and most 
sacred feelings and aspirations of humanity. That 
is all you have produced; there are thousands such 
to be seen to-day. Alas ! my heart bleeds over the 



HOUSEHOLD GOBS. 



185 



stories I hear all over the land, which I could give 
you as illustrations of this fact. All this mischief 
comes of upsetting God's order — cultivating the in- 
tellect at the expense of the heart ; being at more 
pains to make our youth clever than to make them 
GOOD ! 

This false theory leads to false methods, and 
hence the deplorable condition of our nation to-day. 
It leads to the separating from home life our little 
boys of ten and twelve years of age, and our girls 
too, alas! sendino- 1 them away from the tender in- 
fluences, and what ought to be the grand and noble 
inspirations of their mothers, to herd with boys of 
their own age and class, to have their moral nature 
manipulated by masters, often skeptical or immoral. 

Now I say, and will maintain,, that the chief end 
of education is not mere teaching, but ixspieatiox; 
and if you fail to inspire your pupil with nobleness, 
disinterested goodness, truth, morality, and religion, 
not only are all the glorious ends of education lost, 
but you damn your pupil more deeply than he might 
have been damned without your education. I ask, 
Is it not so ? Take some of your own sons (alas ! T 
could point to numbers round about) as illustrations 
of this fact. God has given every child a tutor in 
his mother, and she is the best and only right tutor 
for the heart. 

I defy you to fill a proper mother's place for in- 
fluence over the heart. If God were to depute the 
angel Gabriel, he could not do it. God has tied the 
child to its mother by such peculiar moral and men- 



186 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



tal links that no other being could possibly possess. 
I tell you, mothers here, that if you are good mothers, 
you are committing the greatest wrong to send away 
your child from your homes, and I believe this 
wretched practice is ruining half our nation to-day. 
God committed the child to its parents to be educa- 
ted, not to the schoolmaster. You can employ the 
schoolmaster to teach his head, — and even then you 
must be very careful of what sort he is, or he will 
ruin the child; but God committed the child to the 
parents to be educated, trained — that is taught how 
to feel, think, and act. And it is to the mother es- 
pecially belongs the art and the capacity to inspire 
her boy to love all that is noble and good, and dis- 
interested, and grand in humanity, and to keep on 
inspiring him until he is strong enough in moral 
excellence ; in other words, strong enough in God's 
likeness and grace to walk alone. Just as you tend 
him when he is a baby, and will not leave him to 
strangers, so, while he is a moral infant, you are to 
watch and keep and train him until he is able to 
walk alone. I set my soul on this , with regard to 
my own children, and God has enabled me to do it. 
I had a great fight over it in many ways, but I said, 
" I am determined to keep my children for God and 
goodness. They shall have the education that I 
think likely to help them to be useful to their gen- 
eration, as far as possible ; but I will never sacrifice 
purity to polish, I will never sacrifice the heart to 
the head." That was my resolve, and I see no cause 
to regret it. 



HOUSEHOLD GODS. 



187 



I think it was Fenelon who said that " the service 
of my family is more important than the service of 
myself, and the service of my nation is more im- 
portant than the service of my family, and the ser- 
vice of humanity is more important than the service 
of my nation." That is my opinion. This is God's 
idea of man's highest vocation : " The Son of Man 
is come to seek and to save that which was lost." 
If God's type of manhood had been a being crammed 
with knowledge to the exclusion of the moral and 
religious sentiments, Jesus Christ would have been 
such a man, whereas He was the opposite. He com- 
bined all the tenderness, sublime devotion, and self- 
sacrifice of the woman with the intellect and strength 
of the man. He was God's model man. That is 
the type for us. Therefore, for the sake of your 
children and your own grey hairs, I beseech you to 
see to it that you train and educate them in His like- 
ness. Alas ! I know many parents in this land to- 
day, who are wringing their hands in anguish for 
the consequences of a false notion of education ; and 
yet there are tens of thousands more who are mak- 
ing the same experiment, to have the same results. 

I was staying in a mansion some time ago, where 
there was everything that wealth and refinement 
could procure to make the parents happy. But I 
thought as I looked at the dear old gentleman — one 
of the kindly type of man, at whose table you like 
to sit down because of the genial intercourse and 
the generous sympathies of his soul towards all hu- 
manity — but I thought there seemed to be a gloom 



188 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



over the household. I felt as if he had a sorrow- 
ful spirit, though I knew not why. After dinner, 
when we got into 'the library, he said, with trembling 
lips : — 

" I wish you could get a word with E ." 

I said, "Who is that?" 

"My eldest son ; do try to get a minute to speak 
with him." 

"Why, what is the matter?" I said. 

"I am afraid he has embraced skeptical opinions. 
I sent him to a professedly Christian school (ah, I 
thought, the old story !) and then to college, and 
now I am afraid he is nearly an infidel." 

And when I got hold of the young gentleman, I 
saw that he was just of the type our modern schools 
produce — self-conceited, self-indulged, proud, vain ; 
a young man who looked down on his father much 
as an antiquated picture or piece of furniture. Oh, 
these stories, they break my heart ! I felt that this 
dear old man spent his money on the education of 
his son, and. thought he was doing the best he could 
for him, to send him to a so-called Christian school 
and then to a so-called Christian college, and here is 
the result; and there are thousands of such results ! 

Yet people send their sons over and over again to 
these schools and colleges, commit them knowingly 
to skeptical and infidel teachers — give them over, 
body, mind, and soul, to them, to go through a proc- 
ess of education which necessitates the putting 
into their hands of text books containing all manner 
of idolatrous legends and impure and immoral his- 



HOUSEHOLD GODS. 



189 



tories, bringing into their imaginations all manner 
of profanities and impurities just at the most critical 
period of their history. And this is all done under 
the name of "Christian Education." 

I could tell you stories that would make you weep 
almost tears of blood at the consequences of these 
associations. Don't I know mothers to-day who are 
wringing their hands in agony, and fathers who are 
bowed down almost to the grave, broken-hearted, 
because of them ? Add to this education association 
with troops of godless, lawless, and frequently im- 
moral youths, whom they are sure to have for their 
companions, and then wonder that youths isolated 
from their mothers, sisters, and all the refining influ- 
ences of home life — put into these schools and col- 
leges, and kept there frequently for seven or eight 
years, and I ask, Can parents be surprised that they 
receive them back without any principles, without 
any love for their parents, without any religion, 
and without any respect for humanity? to walk 
about and trample under foot the most sacred 
instincts, and feelings, and aspirations of true man- 
hood and womanhood, and to march over the nation 
to spread desolation and ruin wherever they go — 
moral waifs and strays — drifting down the current 
of humanity, down, down to everlasting shame ? 

This is the result of modern education falsely so 
called. I challenge anybody to disprove it. Now 
then, I say, let every Christian parent in his closet 
settle before God this matter. What will you make 
your child ? Will you say, " I will be more con- 



190 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



cerned that lie shall be a good, benevolent, holy man, 
working for the good of his race, than that he shall 
be one of those intellectual monsters, all head and 
no heart. I will rather that he should be poor and 
good than that he should be rich and wicked " ? 
When you come to that you will save your child- 
ren. But you say, " Well, I must have this position 
and that position for him, not because of the use he 
will be to humanity and the glory he will bring to 
God, but because he will be a bigger man, having 
social position and influence." Ah ! thousands have 
said that, and their sons have ended in being 110- 
bodys — idle, extravagant, spendthrifts, taking all 
the patrimony of their brothers and sisters to keep 
them going in their evil courses. Truly " God is 
not mocked: whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he 
also reap." 



The Salvation Army Following Cheist. 



BY COMMISSIONER RALLTOX. 

DrPviXG the past twenty years tliere lias been 
growing up in the midst of Christendom an organ- 
ization which has been all along denounced and 
opposed, in a manner remarkably resembling the 
opposition shown to Christ and His apostles by the 
religious and respectable people of their daj T . The 
very phrases applied to the latter have been those 
most commonly used in connection with the Salva- 
tion Army. 

Such expressions as "blasphemy," " blasphemous 
performance," "mockery of religion," have been re- 
peatedly used by the most thoughtful and influential 
critics with respect to this organization, and for 
what reason? Simply because poor and unlettered 
men and women are found continually expressing 
an intimate acquaintance with God in terms almost 
identical with, those which are common in the 
Psalms and the Gospels. The poor man cries, and 
the Lord hears and delivers him; the convicted pub- 
lican smites on his breast and cries, " God be merci- 
ful to me a sinner," but the unbelieving onlooker 
denounces his crying as an " intolerable noise," and 
191 

li 



192 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



his declaration that he has been delivered, an " un- 
warrantable presumption.'' It is notorious that in 
thousands of buildings next Sunday, congregations 
of people who, a few years ago, had nothing what- 
ever to do with the worship of God, will be repeat- 
ing exactly such-like experiences. Yet even some 
of those who regard these people with a somewhat 
friendly eye will excuse their making " a joyful noise 
unto the Lord" as a "pardonable extravagance," 
and will explain that it is due to their " want of cul- 
ture " that they do not worship God in the " decor- 
ous silence " which is customary in modern places 
of worship. As for the greater part of the commun- 
ity, they will denounce the whole of the proceedings 
as an "outrageous nuisance," "a farce," etc., which 
" ought to be put down," or got rid of, if it were 
possible, and which it is to be hoped " will not last 
long." 

Now it is a remarkable fact, worthy of the most 
careful study by all who would understand either 
the power of God or the times in which we live, 
that in the face of all this hostile opposition this 
Army will go on without altering its course in the 
slightest degree to gain public favor, and that in 
fact it has gone on steadily increasing during twen- 
ty years, in spite of such opposition. 

Five years ago this Army had only 442 corps and 
1,067 officers — persons, that is to say, employed in 
the work and supported by it. During the year 
1882 no less than 669 of the soldiers, — 251 of them 
women — were knocked down, kicked, or brutally 



THE SALVATION ARMY FOLLOWING CHRIST. 193 

assaulted in the streets; fifty-six of the 530 buildings 
used were attacked and partially wrecked, and 
eighty-six officers or soldiers, fifteen of them women, 
were locked up and imprisoned by the authorities in 
connection with the open-air services. Bishops, 
editors of religious papers, chairmen of great relig- 
ious assemblies united to denounce the Army in the 
extremest terms ; but at the end of five years it is 
found to consist of 2,153 corps, under the leadership 
of more than 5,200 officers. 

Now, if it be correct that the Army sj^stematises 
blasphemy, this prodigious increase is truly a calam- 
ity ; but if, on the contrary, it is found that thou- 
sands whose every second sentence was formerly an 
oath, and who neither feared God nor regarded man, 
are now to be seen clothed and in their right minds, 
singing (though it may be in rough style) the 
praises of God, and living honest, industrious and 
benevolent lives; then surely these figures eloquent- 
ly demonstrate that the truth lies entirely on the 
other side, and that this vast working-class organi- 
zation is, after all, acting in conformity with the will 
of God, and therefore blessed and helped by Him, 
involving the inevitable conclusion that the common 
opinion of the day is in violent opposition to the 
spirit and work of Jesus of Nazareth. 

Let us examine a little more closely the method 
of the Army's increase, as illustrated by one of its 
most recent advances. A couple of young girls for- 
merly engaged in domestic service, declare them- 
selves to be called to preach the Gospel, For this 



194 



P OP ULAR CHRIS TIAXITY. 



purpose they place themselves at the disposal of the 
only religious organization in the world which 
thinks it right to give them this opportunity, and 
after careful examination into their character, they 
are sent off to a foreign country, where they are to 
raise an Army corps in a certain small town. The 
building in which they are to gather their congrega- 
tion is simply a long-disused workshop, where a 
number of unbacked seats have been placed. There 
is not a single person in the town who can be regard- 
ed as friendly to their mission, and most people con- 
sider their appointment as directly opposed to the 
will of Christ. Yet night after night their humble 
barracks are crowded with an audience consisting 
mainly of persons who have never worshipped God 
before. The meetings are interrupted, and violent 
scenes sometimes occur. Yet, as is common all over 
the world, those two officers have raised a corps 
in a short time. 

And what is their corps ? It consists of working 
men and women who are ready to stand up in the 
meetings and add their testimony to that of their 
officers, that Jesus Christ is a living Saviour. In the 
language of apostles and psalmists, not quoted but 
reproduced almost in identical terms from their own 
experience, they say that they were up to the time 
of their coming to these meetings "afar off by sin 
and wicked works, but have now been brought nigh 
to God by the blood of the Cross;" that He has 
filled their hearts with peace and gladness such as 
they never found while in pursuit of worldly pleasure, 



THE SALVATION ARMY FOLLOWING CHRIST. 195 



— a peace and gladness which rather increase than 
diminish under the scorn and opposition of family, 
friends, and workmates. It is not long before some 
of these converts are found expressing their high- 
est ideal of duty in the desire to clo exactly what 
their officers did when they left home, situation, 
worldly comforts and prospects, and embarked on a 
life of poverty and difficulty such as they have seen 
worked out before their eyes, in order to spread the 
glad tidings of a real Saviour from sin, whom they 
personally know. 

Every step in the Army's progress has been ac- 
complished in some such way as this, and the 
astonishment to most of us is not that such results 
should follow, but that people of intelligence should 
either continue with their eyes closed to it all, as 
though it had no existence, or else with persistence 
object, as though the Army were violating in every 
way the will of God. Again I say, this drives one 
inevitably to one of two conclusions, — either the 
Army must be a system of the most terribly God- 
dishonoring delusion, — a curse to the world of the 
most awful kind, or else, if it be indeed what it pro- 
fesses to be, inspired, moved, and directed by Him 
— then the peoples of our day must have departed 
far from the spirit and teaching of God, both by His 
prophets and His Son, to have come into direct col- 
lision with these forces acting under His leadership. 

If we search still more deeply into the secret of 
the Army's life and activities we shall find at every 
step the phenomenon of a faith and practice exactly 



196 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



similar to those which the language of psalmists and 
apostles, literally taken, describe. Here are poor 
fishermen who declare that they have heard Jesus 
Christ calling them to leave all and follow Him. 
They say that He walks by their side on the shore 
and sails with them over the stormy deep ; that 
they commune with Him in the night watches; 
that whereas, but a short time ago, they were so 
utterly in darkness as to know nothing of the possi- 
bility of prayer, they now see clearly those great 
spiritual truths which have sustained their comrades 
in ages past ; that God Himself is their light, and 
gives them to see, day by day, amidst the most toil- 
some occupations and the most ruffianly surround- 
ings more and more of Himself and His will con- 
cerning them. Nobody pretends to question that 
the lives of multitudes of such men have been, as 
the result of their connection with this Army, trans- 
formed as completely as they themselves declare 
that their inward experiences have been. Here are 
people who, but a few years ago, received with blows 
and curses those who spoke to them in the name of 
Christ, but who now manifest the same tender love 
towards those who ill-treat as was shown in the first 
place towards themselves — men and women who 
gladly bear contempt, abuse, poverty, and suffering 
of every kind, that they may spend the part of life 
which still remains to them in proclaiming their 
Saviour; men and women whose want of education 
and of many qualifications that one would suppose 
to be desirable for such a work, cannot prevent from 



THE SALVATION ARMY FOLLOWING CHRIST. 197 



profoundly impressing the souls, and thus changing 
the lives of multitudes of others. How is it all to 
be accounted for ? We must either accept their 
own account of the marvel, and conclude that it is 
by the power of Jesus of Nazareth that these men 
see and walk thus in the presence of us all, or else 
we must find some other way of accounting for the 
change wrought in them. 

Attempts of this kind have indeed been made, but 
they do not commend themselves to very serious at- 
tention. " Excitement — all excitement ! " some 
have said. But has religious excitement ever been 
known to last for years consecutively in individual 
cases? Generally speaking, the duration of a wave 
of popular excitement upon any subject is to be 
measured by weeks, or by months at most. But 
here we have huge audiences gathered continuously, 
Sunday after Sunday, for years, and men and wo- 
men devoting themselves to the holding of services 
said to be of the " most exhausting character," night 
after night, without intermission. How can any 
mere excitement account for all this? 

A somewhat more reasonable theory is that the 
Army owes all its successes to a "rigid discipline." 
But is not this begging the whole question? That 
the Army maintains and extends its influence largely 
as the result of military order and system is un- 
doubtedly true ; but the question is how men and 
women, hitherto averse to all religious control, and 
indeed, control of any kind, are induced to submit 
themselves without fee or reward to the orders of 



198 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



those who are often in every way their inferiors. 
Look at that young lad, not out of his teens, com- 
manding a corps in some large city. His every sign 
is obej'ecl by men and women old enough to be his 
grandparents, by tradesmen who were accustomed 
to manage business affairs before he learned arith- 
metic (what little he knows of it), by sergeants 
-and soldiers of the Army, who have served years 
longer than himself in it, and some of whom know 
more of God and mankind, more of the work and 
literature of the Army, than he does. Whence all 
this ready obedience, this systematic labor under 
such leadership? It is easy to explain ail upon " the 
love of Christ constraineth us " principle, " submit- 
ting yourselves one to another in love ; " but take 
that away, and what becomes of the Army's disci- 
pline ? 

The Army's discipline is all the more remarkable 
when we remember that it is applied amongst all na- 
tions alike, and that in the world's three greatest 
Republics it is carried out as successfully as amongst 
communities more accustomed to the idea of submis- 
sion to absolute authority. Moreover, the marvel of 
general and absolute obedience, rendered without 
murmuring by persons of ail sorts and conditions, 
scattered all over the world, is all the more striking 
at a time when any approach to the exercise of 
authority in connection with religious work is be- 
coming more and more out of the question. 

Just consider for a moment what this Army 
discipline amounts to. Forty thousand times this 



THE SALVATION ARMY FOLLOWING CHRIST. 199 

week, and every week of this hot summer, bodies of 
men and women are induced, after having toiled all 
day at their usual employment, to walk a more or 
less considerable distance from their homes, and 
place themselves under the leadership of officers 
who keep them from two to three hours engaged in 
praying, singing, speaking, marching through the 
streets, standing in narrow, dirty alleys and courts, 
or sitting on unbacked seats in the close atmosphere 
of uncomfortable buildings. Yet this only repre- 
sents the public services of the Arm}'. AVe give up 
in despair any attempt to calculate the number of 
hours spent by scores of thousands of these soldiers 
in visiting, War Cry selling, and other labors, under 
the direction of their officers. All this will bear 
investigation and consideration to any extent; and 
the more it is considered, the more inevitable will 
be the conclusion that the Army's strength within 
and without must arise from a power far superior 
to anything human. If so, then the Army is every- 
where a standing manifestation of the saving power 
of God and a standing reproof to the "modern 
thought " which ignores that power. 

The one-minded and one-heartedness of the Army 
is strikingly exemplified in its newspapers and its 
prayers. It has twenty-four War Crys, published 
in as many different countries and colonies, in their 
several languages. In not one of these can there be 
found any recognition of the controversies which 
disturb the Christian world ! They represent 
minds always engaged upon the one subject, lives 



200 



POPULAR CHRISTIANITY. 



entirely devoted to the one object — the subjugation 
of the world to the dominion of Jesus Christ. In 
prayer this absolute union of heart and mind is even 
more remarkable. In the course of more than twen- 
ty years there have of course arisen frequently within 
the Army differences and disputings, which could 
not have been easily brought to an end but for the 
exercise of a strong central authority ; but it is a 
remarkable fact that these differences have scarcely 
ever arisen from any variety of opinions, and in only 
one or two instances from the introduction of any 
new teaching. I was very much impressed lately 
with the Army's oneness in prayer, during a tour in 
which I had the opportunity to observe closely the 
action of soldiers of half a dozen different nations in 
succession. I do not wonder that the Army is re- 
proached with the constant use of a few phrases, 
repeated over and over again. The accusation is 
gloriously correct to this extent — that officers and 
soldiers, to whatever class or nation they may be- 
long, and wherever you may meet them, appear to 
have their minds so concentrated upon the one great 
theme, and their whole energies so thoroughly 
called out for the accomplishment of the one result, 
that to hear one is to hear all. 

Kow to what conclusion can one come but that 
either all this union is produced by one Almighty 
Spirit working " all in all " — according to the Scrip- 
tures, making His real followers not only of one 
spirit but " of one mind," giving them to " see light 
in His light,"' producing in every one the same pur- 



THE SALVATION ARMY FOLLOWING CHRIST. 201 

pose and the same entire subjection to the will of 
Christ, — or else that we are in presence of the most 
astounding wonder of the age, without having 
placed before us any means of accounting for its 
existence ? 

This becomes all the more evident when we look 
at the financial system of the Army. To overcome 
the general indifference to religion and its teachers, 
it has become common, in our time, to endeavor to 
induce the poor to attend the ministrations of this 
or that religious community by the presentation of 
gifts, or the provision of gratuitous entertainments. 
The Salvation Army, on the other hand, goes to the 
people in every service with its collecting boxes, and 
pays the rental of expensive buildings everywhere 
by means of the poor man's pence ! Hundreds of 
thousands of pounds are contributed in this way 
annually, the people not only meeting the cost of 
the services conducted in their own immediate 
neighborhood, but assisting in the extension of the 
Army's work all over the world, and showing the 
greatest readiness to respond to every appeal from 
new enterprises. There are multitudes of persons 
whose incomes are between 10s. and 20s. per week, 
who give to the Army one or two shillings of that 
amount, besides devoting so much of their time and 
strength to its operations, as already explained. 
The 5,000 officers who have given themselves up en- 
tirely to the war, without the guarantee of any salary 
whatever, merely represent tens of thousands more 
who would gladly do the same thing, if we were able 



202 



P OP ULAR CHRIS TIAXITT. 



rapidly enough to arrange for their despatch to 
every part of the great world-field. We had more 
than 1,000 such offers in a few weeks of 1887, in 
England alone. To all these people home and com- 
fort are as enjoyable as to yourself or any one else ; 
yet they glory in the possibility of a whole life of 
self-denying activity for Christ, and eagerly look 
forward to the day when, far from home and old 
friends, their bodies shall be lowered into a salvation 
soldier's grave, amid the tears and prayers of others 
now revelling in sinful indulgence, but induced by 
their life, example, and testimony to leave all and 
follow Christ. 

Let no one say in presence of a vast assemblage of 
facts like this, that it is no longer required of us, or 
no longer within our power, to follow in the foot- 
steps of the prophets and apostles of the past. 
Amidst the snows of Lapland, as well as in the 
Indian jungle, on the outskirts of European occu- 
pancy in the far West and the other side of the 
world, as well as in the midst of crowded European 
and American cities, men and women are proving 
every day that the experiences of the Psalms, — the 
very experiences of God's presence and salvation, 
which in apostolic clays made the poor, despised, and 
persecuted followers of the Messiah the happiest of 
beings, — are now within the reach of all who will 
equally deny themselves, take up their cross and 
follow Him who became poor in order to make others 
rich forever. 

The Salvation Army deserves and demands the 



THE SALVATION ARMY FOLLOWING CHRIST. 203 



careful and patient study of all who would learn 
how best to follow God and hasten the coming of 
His kingdom. The more closely and carefully you 
examine, the more fully will you be driven to the 
conclusion — the opinions of the day to the contrary, 
notwithstanding — that those who truly wish to fol- 
low Christ at all costs can do so in this age as well 
as in previous ones, and will succeed, just as others 
have done before, in gaining the world's hatred, the 
smile of God, and the victory which He guarantees 
to all who trust in and obey Him. 



LXTEEXATIOXAL HeADQTTABTEBS OF THE 

Salvation Aemy, Loxdox, E. C. 
July , 1887. 



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